Genomic insights into the differentiated population admixture structure and demographic history of North East Asians

Abstract

North China and South Siberia, mainly populated by Altaic-speaking populations, possess extensive ethnolinguistic diversity and serve as the crossroad for the initial peopling of America and western-eastern trans-continental communication. Yet, the complex scenarios of genetic origin, population structure, and admixture history of North-East Asia remain to be fully characterized, especially for Mongolic people in China with a genome-wide perspective. Thus, we genotyped genome-wide SNPs for 510 individuals from 38 Chinese Mongolic, Tungusic, and Sinitic populations to explore the sharing alleles and haplotypes within the studied groups and following merged it with 3508 modern and ancient Eurasian individuals to reconstruct the deep evolutionary and natural selection history of northern East Asians. We identified significant substructures within Altaic-speaking populations with the primary common ancestry linked to the Neolithic northern East Asians: Western Turkic people harbored more western Eurasian ancestry; Northern Mongolic people in Siberia and eastern Tungusic people in Amur River Basin (ARB) possessed dominant Neolithic Mongolian Plateau (MP) or ARB ancestry; Southern Mongolic people in China owned obvious genetic impact from Neolithic Yellow River Basin (YRB) farmers. Additionally, we found the differentiated admixture history between western and eastern Mongolians and geographically close Northeast Hans: the former received a genetic impact from western Eurasians and the latter retained the dominant YRB and ARB Neolithic ancestry. Moreover, we demonstrated that Kalmyk people from the northern Caucasus Mountain possessed a strong genetic affinity with Neolithic MP people, supporting the hypothesis of their eastern Eurasian origin and long-distance migration history. We also illuminated that historic pastoral empires in the MP contributed considerably to the gene pool of northern Mongolic people but rarely to southern ones. We finally found natural signatures in Mongolians associated with alcohol metabolism. Generally, our results not only illuminated that complex population migration and admixture of Neolithic ancestral sources from the MP or ARB played an important role in the spread of Altaic-speaking populations and Proto-Altaic language, which partly supported the Northeast Asia-origin hypothesis, but also demonstrated that the observed multi-sources of genetic diversity contributed significantly to the modern existing extensive ethnolinguistic diversity in North-East Asia.

ACE and ACTN3 Gene Polymorphisms and Genetic Traits of Rowing Athletes in the Northern Han Chinese Population

“…Genetic studies based on higher-resolution, genome-wide autosomal and uniparental Y-chromosome and mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid SNP data from 599 Northwest Han (Gansu Province) individuals showed increased genetic homogeneity in northwest Han individuals relative to the Mongolian/Turkic/Tungus and Tibetan–Burmese populations in the north ( Yao et al, 2021 ). The 986 previous genome-wide analyses from southernmost, central, and northern modern Han Chinese are consistent with the primary ancestry of modern southeastern coastal Han Chinese originating from northern China ( He G. et al, 2021 ; He G. G. et al, 2021 ). There was a genetic substructure in Shaanxi Han in terms of north–south-related ancestry corresponding well to latitudes ( He G. L. et al, 2021 ) and great genetic differentiation compared to Guizhou Han ( Wang et al, 2021 ).…”

Genomic Insight Into the Population Admixture History of Tungusic-Speaking Manchu People in Northeast China

“…Besides, recent genomewide studies among Altaic-speaking populations in Northeast Asia have also found differentiated genetic admixture profiles between northern and southern Altaic-speaking populations and eastern and western Mongolians (He et al, 2021b). The reconstructed demographic models using ancient genomes further showed the Tungusic people keep a strong genetic homogeneity within populations, and the type of Tungusicdominant ancestry probably originated in a vast region from Mongolian Plateau to Amur River Basin about at least 16,000 years ago (He et al, 2021b;Mao et al, 2021). However, there are few genome-wide SNP data from Tungusic-speaking Manchu people reported so far.…”

“…Most genetic investigations based on the high-density genome-wide genetic variations from non-Altaic people in East Asia have revealed a fine-scale genetic landscape of genetic diversity and population admixture among the populations from different-language families (He et al, 2021a,c;Liu et al, 2021a,b;Wang et al, 2021d;Yao et al, 2021). Besides, recent genomewide studies among Altaic-speaking populations in Northeast Asia have also found differentiated genetic admixture profiles between northern and southern Altaic-speaking populations and eastern and western Mongolians (He et al, 2021b). The reconstructed demographic models using ancient genomes further showed the Tungusic people keep a strong genetic homogeneity within populations, and the type of Tungusicdominant ancestry probably originated in a vast region from Mongolian Plateau to Amur River Basin about at least 16,000 years ago (He et al, 2021b;Mao et al, 2021).…”

Screening and selection of 21 novel microhaplotype markers for ancestry inference in ten Chinese subpopulations

“…Genetic evidence inferred from the STR, SNP, InDel in the autosomal, X/Y-chromosomes has demonstrated that China with massive ethnolinguistic diversity harbored multiple genetic diversity [24][25][26][27][28]. Recent genetic analyses based on the genome-wide SNP data have revealed the obvious fine-scale population stratifications among the populations from different language families, such as significant genetic differences were identified between Sinitic-speaking Han Chinese and Tungusic/Mongolic/Turkic people in the north [29], Tibeto-Burman people in the southwest [30], and Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, Austronesian and Austroasiatic speakers in the south [31]. Although these aforementioned genetic substructures of Chinese populations have been characterized through SNPs [32], the atlas of the genetic structures of Chinese populations are not fully understood and need further investigation to shed light the fine-scale structures for forensic purposes.…”