Human genetic admixture

Abstract

Throughout human history, large-scale migrations have facilitated the formation of populations with ancestry from multiple previously separated populations. This process leads to subsequent shuffling of genetic ancestry through recombination, producing variation in ancestry between populations, among individuals in a population, and along the genome within an individual. Recent methodological and empirical developments have elucidated the genomic signatures of this admixture process, bringing previously understudied admixed populations to the forefront of population and medical genetics. Under this theme, we present a collection of recent PLOS Genetics publications that exemplify recent progress in human genetic admixture studies, and we discuss potential areas for future work.