Challenges in selecting admixture models and marker sets to infer genetic ancestry in a Brazilian admixed population

Abstract

The inference of genetic ancestry plays an increasingly prominent role in clinical, population, and forensic genetics studies. Several genotyping strategies and analytical methodologies have been developed over the last few decades to assign individuals to specific biogeographic regions. However, despite these efforts, ancestry inference in populations with a recent history of admixture, such as those in Brazil, remains a challenge. In admixed populations, proportion and components of genetic ancestry vary on different levels: (i) between populations; (ii) between individuals of the same population, and (iii) throughout the individual's genome. The present study evaluated 1171 admixed Brazilian samples to compare the genetic ancestry inferred by tri-/tetra-hybrid admixture models and evaluated different marker sets from those with small numbers of ancestry informative markers panels (AIMs), to high-density SNPs (HDSNP) and whole-genome-sequence (WGS) data. Analyses revealed greater variation in the correlation coefficient of ancestry components within and between admixed populations, especially for minority ancestral components. We also observed positive correlation between the number of markers in the AIMs panel and HDSNP/WGS. Furthermore, the greater the number of markers, the more accurate the tri-/tetra-hybrid admixture models.