Childhood stunting remains a prominent metric in the health and development of modern India. In Karnataka, India, districts vary substantially in stunting prevalence. Here we take a close look at the nature of childhood stunting in the state: its …
Childhood stunting remains a public health concern in India. In Karnataka, the districts vary substantially in stunting prevalence. Using the NFHS-4 and AidData GEO datasets, we tested the hypothesis that ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ districts in Karnataka show …
Domestication of crops and animals during the Holocene epoch played a critical role in shaping human culture, diet and genetic variation. This domestication process took place across a span of time and space, especially in Asia. We hypothesize that domestication of plants and animals around the world must have influenced the human genome differentially among human populations to a far greater degree than has been appreciated previously. The range of domesticated foods that were available in different regions can be expected to have created regionally distinct nutrient intake profiles and deficiencies. To capture this complexity, we used archaeobotanical evidence to construct two models of dietary nutrient composition over a 9000 year time span in Asia: one based on Larson et al. (2014) and measured through composition of 8 nutrients, and another taking into account a wider range of crops, cooking and lifestyle variation, and the dietary variables glycemic index and carbohydrate content. We hypothesize that the subtle dietary shifts through time and space have also influenced current human genetic variation among Asians. We used statistical methods BayeScEnv, BayeScan and Baypass, to examine the impact of our reconstructed long-term dietary habits on genome-wide genetic variation in 29 current-day Asian populations (Figure S1, Figure 1, Figure 2). Our results show that genetic variation in diet-related pathways is correlated with dietary differences among Asian populations. SNPs in five genes, GHR, LAMA1, SEMA3A, CAST and TCF7L2, involved in the gene ontologies ‘salivary gland morphogenesis’ and ‘negative regulation of type B pancreatic cell apoptotic process’ suggest that metabolism may have been primary targets of selection driven by dietary shifts. These shifts may have influenced biological pathways in ways that have a lasting impact on health. We present a case that archaeobotanical evidence can provide valuable insight for understanding how historical human niche construction might have influenced modern human genetic variation.
Whole genome analysis in large samples from a single population is needed to provide adequate power to assess relative strengths of natural selection across different functional components of the genome. In this study, we analyzed next-generation …
Following the dispersal out of Africa, where hominins evolved in warm environments for millions of years, our species has colonised different climate zones of the world, including high latitudes and cold environments. The extent to which human …
Background: Many efforts have been made to detect signatures of positive selection in the human genome, especially those associated with expansion from Africa and subsequent colonization of all other continents. However, most approaches have not …
Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) have been found to be enriched in trait-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). However, whether eQTLs are adaptive to different environmental factors and its relative evolutionary significance …
South Asian populations harbor a high degree of genetic diversity, due in part to demographic history. Two studies on genome-wide variation in Indian populations have shown that most Indian populations show varying degrees of admixture between …
Background The genetic basis of the autoimmune disease type 1 diabetes (T1D) has now been largely determined, so now we can compare these findings with emerging genetic knowledge of disorders and phenotypes that have been negatively or positively …