Category Archives: Genetics

I was emailing with a friend of mine about population genetic history and Southeast Asia. I mentioned offhand that there is an east to west cline of Tibeto-Burman ancestry in Bengal. He expressed surprise, assuming Partition had scrambled everything. As most readers of this weblog know, Partition was less traumatic for Bengal than it was for …

Continue reading “The religious and genetic structure of Bengal & Partition”

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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 12: The New York Times takes on Ancient DNAThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Podcasts)we discussed the controversy that has erupted over a 12,000-word piece in The New York Times Ma…

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Unless you have been sleeping under a rock, a mildly slanderous piece in The New York Times Magazine has taken aim at David Reich and his band of paleogeneticists, Is Ancient DNA Research Revealing New Truths — or Falling Into Old Traps? I address this piece at my other weblog. One of the major themes … Continue reading “The hammer of the All-Father”

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In 2010 researchers sequenced the whole genome of a single Neanderthal. From comparing this genome to that of humans alive today they concluded, to their surprise, that many modern human populations had Neanderthal ancestry! More specifically, all popu…

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Look at the R and H frequencies. Peach and violent respectively. Compare to South Asian haplogroup frequencies.

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There was a comment below on the positions of Pathans genetically in relation to South Asians and Iranians. The “Pathan” samples are from Pakistan, while “Pashtun” are from Afghanistan. What you can see is that the “Pathan” samples are more like Punjabis, while Pashtuns are like Tajiks. The Iranian samples are from western Iran. You … Continue reading “Pathans between Hind and Iran”

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The data for the above chart was assembled from press reports of various personal genomic companies with a public profile. So the values act as lower bounds. Additionally, the total numbers are from a comment in Genome Biology that I coauthored in the …

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One of the reasons that I don’t post AdmixTools results too much is that the framework requires more statistical “deep thought” than just popping out a PCA or even running some model-based clustering. Read the methods supplements of one of the Reich lab’s papers, and you’ll see what I’m getting at. But a more prosaic […]

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Citation: Scerri, Eleanor ML, et al. “Did our species evolve in subdivided populations across Africa, and why does it matter?.” Trends in ecology & evolution (2018).Over the last generation our understanding of the origin of what we term “modern hu…

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A new paper, The Genetic Ancestry of Modern Indus Valley Populations from Northwest India.

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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 10: the genetics of Game of ThronesThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts and Stitcher) we discuss the genetics and history of the world of Game of Thrones, from the mountains to the olive grove, the First M…

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Sometimes you know something is going to happen. But you don’t know when it’s going to happen. It’s inevitable, but you don’t know when that inevitability is going to realize itself. In a way, death is like that for most of us.And so it is with genetic…

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There is more in heaven and earth than can be dreamt of in any human philosophy. This is why science is not philosophy. Those who map the skies, observe the…View Post

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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 8: the genetics of tasteThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts and Stitcher) Razib Khan and Spencer Wells discuss the genetics of taste. Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and of course, umami!We talked about PTC p…

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The holiday season is upon us. This means food, family, and fun. And when it comes to food and drink it often means excess. People gain weight during the holidays, and that’s a function of our calorie budget. There are some surpluses you don’t want.But…

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The great adventure of the Native AmericansComanche warriors in 19th century TexasIn 1492 Christopher Columbus made definitive and lasting contact between Europe and the New World. This was not the first contact. We know for a fact that Greenland Norse…

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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 7: the genetics of Native AmericansAncient BeringiansThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts and Stitcher) Razib Khan and Spencer Wells discuss the genetics and history of Native Americans, from the icy shore…

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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 5: Reflections on ASHG 2018This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts and Stitcher) Razib Khan and Gareth Highnam discuss our impression of the most recent meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.The A…

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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 5: Reflections on ASHG 2018This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play) Razib Khan and Gareth Highnam discuss our impression of the most recent meeting of the American Society of Human G…

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Another meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics has come and gone. I’ve been going since 2012, and so want to post some observations of how things have changed. This is a big conference. From less than 1,000 people in the late 1970s to nearly…

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