RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Detection of human adaptation during the past 2,000 years
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 052084
DO 10.1101/052084
A1 Yair Field
A1 Evan A Boyle
A1 Natalie Telis
A1 Ziyue Gao
A1 Kyle J. Gaulton
A1 David Golan
A1 Loic Yengo
A1 Ghislain Rocheleau
A1 Philippe Froguel
A1 Mark I. McCarthy
A1 Jonathan K. Pritchard
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/07/052084.abstract
AB Detection of recent natural selection is a challenging problem in population genetics, as standard methods generally integrate over long timescales. Here we introduce the Singleton Density Score (SDS), a powerful measure to infer very recent changes in allele frequencies from contemporary genome sequences. When applied to data from the UK10K Project, SDS reflects allele frequency changes in the ancestors of modern Britons during the past 2,000 years. We see strong signals of selection at lactase and HLA, and in favor of blond hair and blue eyes. Turning to signals of polygenic adaptation we find, remarkably, that recent selection for increased height has driven allele frequency shifts across most of the genome. Moreover, we report suggestive new evidence for polygenic shifts affecting many other complex traits. Our results suggest that polygenic adaptation has played a pervasive role in shaping genotypic and phenotypic variation in modern humans.