The Pith: The rarer the genetic variant, the more likely that variant is to be specific to a distinct population. Including information about the distribution of these genetic variants missed in current techniques can increase greatly the precision of statistical inferences.
A few days ago I mentioned in passing an article in The New York Times which reported on results from a paper which illustrated how starkly differentiated populations might be on rare alleles. By this, I mean that some genetic variants are present at very low frequencies. It turns out that many of these are low frequency variants private to particular populations, in contrast to higher frequency variants which span varied human populations. The explanation presented by one of the authors of the referenced paper was that higher frequency variants presumably date back to a time before human populations had become geographically diversified across the world. Shared variants at higher frequencies then are shadows of shared past history. In contrast, rare variants are a reflection of more recent events, narrowing the circle of those effected.
I have now read the paper in question, Demographic history and rare allele sharing among human populations. …