Evaluating the Impact of Sex-Biased Genetic Admixture in the Americas through the Analysis of Haplotype Data
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MDPI
Materia
Admixture American populations Sex-biased imbalance Haplotypes Human migrations
Date
2021-10-07Referencia bibliográfica
Ongaro, L... [et al.]. Evaluating the Impact of Sex-Biased Genetic Admixture in the Americas through the Analysis of Haplotype Data. Genes 2021, 12, 1580. [https://doi.org/10.3390/genes12101580]
Sponsorship
European Commission 2014-2020.4.01.16-0030 2014-2020.4.01.16-0271 2014-2020.4.01.16-0125 2014-2020.4.01.16-0024 2014-2020.4.01.15-0012; MOBEC008; Estonian Research Council grant PUT PRG243 PRG1027; European Commission 810645 824110; Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) PRIN2017 20174BTC4RAbstract
A general imbalance in the proportion of disembarked males and females in the Americas
has been documented during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Colonial Era and, although less
prominent, more recently. This imbalance may have left a signature on the genomes of modern-day
populations characterised by high levels of admixture. The analysis of the uniparental systems
and the evaluation of continental proportion ratio of autosomal and X chromosomes revealed a
general sex imbalance towards males for European and females for African and Indigenous American
ancestries. However, the consistency and degree of this imbalance are variable, suggesting that other
factors, such as cultural and social practices, may have played a role in shaping it. Moreover, very
few investigations have evaluated the sex imbalance using haplotype data, containing more critical
information than genotypes. Here, we analysed genome-wide data for more than 5000 admixed
American individuals to assess the presence, direction and magnitude of sex-biased admixture in
the Americas. For this purpose, we applied two haplotype-based approaches, ELAI and NNLS, and
we compared them with a genotype-based method, ADMIXTURE. In doing so, besides a general
agreement between methods, we unravelled that the post-colonial admixture dynamics show higher
complexity than previously described.