A Serial Founder Effect Model For Human Settlement Out Of Africa

Main Category: Genetics
Also Included In: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 17 Sep 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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The increasing abundance of human genetic data has shown that the geographic patterns of worldwide genetic diversity are best explained by human expansion out of Africa.

We model human population expansion from a single origin in Africa with multiple subsequent bottleneck events, a process called the serial founder effect.

Through improved simulations, in which we separate colonization events from exchange between neighboring populations, we estimate the range of colonization and exchange rates that best explain key statistics from published data on worldwide variation in microsatellites.

With these estimated parameter values, our results match the observed linear decay of genetic diversity with geographic distance from the origin of expansion.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences