The Gender, Sexuality, and Race Room
So we have found 3 pieces of DNA that are becoming more prevalent in Puerto Ricans since the arrival of Europeans and African slaves. 2 pieces of Native chromosome, and 1 piece of African are showing positive selection.Averaged over a 192 Puerto Ricans, the genomewide mean estimated European ancestry .67, African ancestry was .18, and Native American ancestry was .15...
...At most locations, deviations are within the range of evolutionary drift and statistical fluctuation. However, a few regions exhibit extreme fluctuations that are unlikely to have occurred by chance. Most prominently on chromosome 6p21-6p22, an excess of African ancestry reaches .14 around SNP rs169679; this level of excess was not observed in 20,000 permutations and represents 6.4 SD from the mean of the distribution. Correspondingly, the European ancestry at this location is depressed by .14, whereas Native American ancestry remains unchanged. Additionally, chromosome 8 (peak at SNP 896760) and chromosome 11 (peak at SNP rs637249) show an excess of .13 in Native American, and a deficit in European ancestry.
It'll be interesting when they pinpoint exactly what these genes do.The region underneath our observed peak on chromosome 6p22, includes, in addition to HLA, an olfactory gene cluster. Similarly, the peak on chromosome 11q11 also harbors on an olfactory gene cluster, which has been identified elsewhere as a target of ongoing positive selection. The peak on 8q23.3 harbours less obvious candidates.
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