Asia harbors substantial cultural and linguistic diversity, but the geographic structure of genetic variation across the continent remains enigmatic. Here we report a large-scale survey of autosomal variation from a broad geographic sample of Asian human populations. Our results show that genetic ancestry is strongly correlated with linguistic affiliations as well as geography. Most populations show relatedness within ethnic/linguistic groups, despite prevalent gene flow among populations. More than 90% of East Asian (EA) haplotypes could be found in either Southeast Asian (SEA) or Central-South Asian (CSA) populations and show clinal structure with haplotype diversity decreasing from south to north. Furthermore, 50% of EA haplotypes were found in SEA only and 5% were found in CSA only, indicating that SEA was a major geographic source of EA populations.
CITATION STYLE
Abdulla, M. A., Ahmed, I., Assawamakin, A., Bhak, J., Brahmachari, S. K., Calacal, G. C., … Zilfalil, B. A. (2009). Mapping human genetic diversity in Asia. Science, 326(5959), 1541–1545. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1177074
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