A time transect of exomes from a Native American population before and after European contact

John Lindo, Emilia Huerta-Sánchez, Shigeki Nakagome, Morten Rasmussen, Barbara Petzelt, Joycelynn Mitchell, Jerome S. Cybulski, Eske Willerslev, Michael DeGiorgio () and Ripan S. Malhi ()
Additional contact information
John Lindo: University of Chicago
Emilia Huerta-Sánchez: University of California
Shigeki Nakagome: University of Chicago
Morten Rasmussen: Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen
Barbara Petzelt: Metlakatla Treaty Office
Joycelynn Mitchell: Metlakatla Treaty Office
Jerome S. Cybulski: Canadian Museum of History
Eske Willerslev: Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen
Michael DeGiorgio: Pennsylvania State University, 502 Wartik Laboratory
Ripan S. Malhi: Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract A major factor for the population decline of Native Americans after European contact has been attributed to infectious disease susceptibility. To investigate whether a pre-existing genetic component contributed to this phenomenon, here we analyse 50 exomes of a continuous population from the Northwest Coast of North America, dating from before and after European contact. We model the population collapse after European contact, inferring a 57% reduction in effective population size. We also identify signatures of positive selection on immune-related genes in the ancient but not the modern group, with the strongest signal deriving from the human leucocyte antigen (HLA) gene HLA-DQA1. The modern individuals show a marked frequency decrease in the same alleles, likely due to the environmental change associated with European colonization, whereby negative selection may have acted on the same gene after contact. The evident shift in selection pressures correlates to the regional European-borne epidemics of the 1800s.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13175 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms13175

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13175

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().