Journal article
Ethiopian genetic diversity reveals linguistic stratification and complex influences on the Ethiopian gene pool
L Pagani, T Kivisild, A Tarekegn, R Ekong, C Plaster, I Gallego Romero, Q Ayub, SQ Mehdi, MG Thomas, D Luiselli, E Bekele, N Bradman, DJ Balding, C Tyler-Smith
American Journal of Human Genetics | Published : 2012
Abstract
Humans and their ancestors have traversed the Ethiopian landscape for millions of years, and present-day Ethiopians show great cultural, linguistic, and historical diversity, which makes them essential for understanding African variability and human origins. We genotyped 235 individuals from ten Ethiopian and two neighboring (South Sudanese and Somali) populations on an Illumina Omni 1M chip. Genotypes were compared with published data from several African and non-African populations. Principal-component and STRUCTURE-like analyses confirmed substantial genetic diversity both within and between populations, and revealed a match between genetic data and linguistic affiliation. Using compariso..
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Funding Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge all the Ethiopian donors and collaborators, as well as Sarah Edkins, Emma Gray, Sarah Hunt, Avazeh Tashakkori Ghanbarian, and the staff at the Sanger Institute who performed the genotyping. Great help has also been provided by Priya Moorjani, David Reich, and Nick Patterson for a better understanding of the mathematics underlying the ROLLOFF approach. This work was supported by grant number 098051 from the Wellcome Trust. L.P. would like to thank the providers of a Domestic Research Scholarship, the Cambridge European Trust, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, UK for sponsoring his research. N.B. is the settlor and senior trustee of Melford Charitable Trust and owner of Cordell Homes Ltd., which have in part funded this research. Neither N.B., the charitable trust, nor the company have any intellectual property or other rights with respect to the results of the study.