The Peopling of the Americas Provides Insight into Patterns of Human Genetic Variation

Recent studies of whole genome diversity of populations worldwide reveal a pattern of a nested hierarchy likely caused by multiple founder effects during the peopling of the world.  This model correlates well with other anthropological evidence about the history of humans, but does not fit well with the concept of Race.  However, human populations do exhibit differences in their genomes.  These differences have been described as ancestry informative DNA markers (AIMs) and are a result of selection on the genome and population history.  In this presentation, I show how AIMs can develop as a result of population history by discussing genetic data for the peopling of the Americas.            Multiple lines of genetic evidence suggest that the Americas were peopled from an ancestral population in Northeast Asia.  However, recent analyses of whole mitochondrial genomes and a nuclear locus among Native American groups have identified DNA Markers only found in Native Americans.  The inference from identifying these population specific markers is that the ancestral source of Native Americans was isolated in Beringia for an extended period of time before migrating to the Americas.  While these population specific DNA markers can be used as AIMs, they are few in number and the majority of genetic diversity is shared with other populations worldwide.