Patterns of genetic differentiation and the footprints of historical migrations in the Iberian Peninsula

Open access preprint (which I announced already) at bioRxiv Patterns of genetic differentiation and the footprints of historical migrations in the Iberian Peninsula, by Bycroft et al. (2018).

Abstract (emphasis mine):

Genetic differences within or between human populations (population structure) has been studied using a variety of approaches over many years. Recently there has been an increasing focus on studying genetic differentiation at fine geographic scales, such as within countries. Identifying such structure allows the study of recent population history, and identifies the potential for confounding in association studies, particularly when testing rare, often recently arisen variants. The Iberian

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Population substructure in Iberia, highest in the north-west territory (to appear in Nature)

A manuscript co-authored by Angel Carracedo, from the University of Santiago de Compostela, and (always according to him) pre-accepted in Nature, will offer more insight into the population substructure of Spain, based on autosomal DNA.

Carracedo’s lecture about DNA (in Galician), including his summary of the paper (from december 2017):

Some of the points made in the video:

The study shows a situation parallelling – as expected – the expansion of Spanish Medieval kingdoms during the Reconquista (and subsequent repopulation).
In it, the biggest surprise seems to be the greater substructure found in Galicia, the north-western Spanish

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Asian ancestry of the Roma people in Europe

New article, Tau haplotypes support the Asian ancestry of the Roma population settled in the Basque Country, by Alfonso-Sánchez et al., Nature (2017).

Abstract:

We examined tau haplotype frequencies in two different ethnical groups from the Basque Country (BC): Roma people and residents of European ancestry (general population). In addition, we analyzed the spatial distribution of tau haplotypes in Eurasian populations to explore the genetic affinities of the Romani groups living in Europe in a broader scope. The 17q21.31 genomic region was characterized through the genotyping of two diagnostic single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs (rs10514879 and rs199451), which allow the

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Analysis of R1b-DF27 haplogroups in modern populations adds new information that contrasts with ‘steppe admixture’ results

New open access article published in Scientific Reports, Analysis of the R1b-DF27 haplogroup shows that a large fraction of Iberian Y-chromosome lineages originated recently in situ, by Solé-Morata et al. (2017).

Abstract

Haplogroup R1b-M269 comprises most Western European Y chromosomes; of its main branches, R1b-DF27 is by far the least known, and it appears to be highly prevalent only in Iberia. We have genotyped 1072 R1b-DF27 chromosomes for six additional SNPs and 17 Y-STRs in population samples from Spain, Portugal and France in order to further characterize this lineage and, in particular, to ascertain the time and place where

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Neolithic and Bronze Age Basque-speaking Iberians resisted invaders from the steppe

Good clickbait, right? I have received reports about this new paper in Google Now the whole weekend, and their descriptions are getting worse each day.

The original title of the article published in PLOS Genetics (already known by its preprint in BioRxiv) was The population genomics of archaeological transition in west Iberia: Investigation of ancient substructure using imputation and haplotype-based methods, by Martiniano et al. (2017).

Maybe the title was not attractive enough, so they sent the following summary, entitled “Bronze Age Iberia received fewer Steppe invaders than the rest of Europe” (also in Phys.org. … Read the rest “Neolithic and Bronze Age Basque-speaking Iberians resisted invaders from the steppe”

Rhetoric of debates, discussions and arguments: Useful destructive criticism for scientific & academic research, reasons and personal opinions; the example of Proto-Indo-European language revival

Rhetoric (Wikipedia) is the art of harnessing reason, emotions and authority, through language, with a view to persuade an audience and, by persuading, to convince this audience to act, to pass judgement or to identify with given values. The word derives from PIE root wer-, ‘speak’, as in MIE zero-grade wrdhom, ‘word’, or full-grade werdhom, ‘verb’; from wrētōr ρήτωρ (rhētōr), “orator” [built like e.g. wistōr (<*wid–tor), Gk. ἵστωρ (histōr), “a wise man, one who knows right, a judge” (from which ‘history’), from PIE root weid-, ‘see, know’]; from … Read the rest “Rhetoric of debates, discussions and arguments: Useful destructive criticism for scientific & academic research, reasons and personal opinions; the example of Proto-Indo-European language revival”