Hunter-gatherer genes helped early European farmers survive disease, reveals study
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(A) Manhattan plot of p values from the Fadm scan across the genome for deviations from expected admixed allele frequencies. Inset, quantile-quantile plot of expected and observed p values. P values were obtained by fitting a gamma distribution to a null sample of 532 approximately independent loci, separated by at least 5 million base pairs (Mb). (B) Local ancestry deviations (LAD) in the Middle Neolithic across the genome, with top peaks of each ancestry labeled. (C) Zoomed-in region of the MHC (chromosome 6), with statistics derived from 1240k and whole-genome shotgun data across the MHC regions I, II, and III on chromosome 6. Credit: Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.049
When early Stone Age farmers first moved into Europe from the Near East about 8,000 years ago, they met and began mixing with the existing hunter-gatherer populations. Now genome-wide studies of hundreds of ancient genomes from this period show more hunter-gatherer ancestry in adaptive-immunity genes in the mixed population than would be expected by chance.
