Journal article
Tracing Ancient Human Migrations into Sahul Using Hepatitis B Virus Genomes
LKW Yuen, M Littlejohn, S Duchêne, R Edwards, S Bukulatjpi, P Binks, K Jackson, J Davies, JS Davis, SYC Tong, S Locarnini
Molecular Biology and Evolution | OXFORD UNIV PRESS | Published : 2019
Abstract
The entry point and timing of ancient human migration into continental Sahul (the combined landmass of Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania) are subject to debate. Unique strains of hepatitis B virus (HBV) are endemic among modernday Australian Aboriginals (HBV/C4) and Indigenous Melanesians (HBV/C3). We postulated that HBV genomes could be used to infer human population movements because the main HBV transmission route in endemic populations is via mother-to-child for genotypes B and C infections. Phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses of HBV genomes inferred the origin of HBV/C4 to be >59 thousand years ago (ka) (95% HPD: 34-85 ka), and most likely to have occurred on the Sunda Shelf (so..
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Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
Our findings and conclusions have been extensively discussed with Aboriginal partners through meetings with an Indigenous Reference Group formed to advise on all aspects of our Hepatitis B work, and discussions with specific Aboriginal communities. The Indigenous Reference Group and communities have all supported the publication of this work (supplementary note, Supplementary Material online). We thank the clinicians who enrolled patients in Darwin, Alice Springs and the numerous remote communities as well as the patients who consented to be part of the study. HBV whole-genome sequences have been deposited into GenBank (accession numbers KU679936-KU679960 and KU695741-KU695746). This work was supported by the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI), an initiative of the Victorian Government, Australia, on its Facility hosted at the University of Melbourne, project number UOM0002, and Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant numbers 1060811 and 1127538, and NHMRC Career Development Fellowships for SYCT (1065736) and J.S.D. (1083105).