Using hominin introgression to trace modern human dispersals
Edited by James F. O’Connell, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, and approved June 17, 2019 (received for review March 26, 2019)
Abstract
The dispersal of anatomically modern human populations out of Africa and across much of the rest of the world around 55 to 50 thousand years before present (ka) is recorded genetically by the multiple hominin groups they met and interbred with along the way, including the Neandertals and Denisovans. The signatures of these introgression events remain preserved in the genomes of modern-day populations, and provide a powerful record of the sequence and timing of these early migrations, with Asia proving a particularly complex area. At least 3 different hominin groups appear to have been involved in Asia, of which only the Denisovans are currently known. Several interbreeding events are inferred to have taken place east of Wallace’s Line, consistent with archaeological evidence of widespread and early hominin presence in the area. However, archaeological and fossil evidence indicates archaic hominins had not spread as far as the Sahul continent (New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania), where recent genetic evidence remains enigmatic.
Acknowledgments
We thank Ray Tobler, Fernando Racimo, Chris Turney, Bastien Llamas, Kieren Mitchell, Yassine Souilmi, and Murray Cox for providing useful comments on the manuscript. We also thank Julien Soubrier and Damien Fordham for help in designing the figures. J.C.T. and A.C. are supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grants and a Laureate Fellowship (A.C.).
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Cover image: Pictured is a cross-sectional model of the basketweave-form Z-band in muscle cells, showing α-actinin, which comprises a central rod domain (blue and purple) with actin-binding domains (red) on either end, cross-linking overlapping actin filament ends of opposite polarity (green and yellow). Thomas Burgoyne et al. derived the 3D structure of the Z-band from midshipman fish swimbladder muscle using electron tomography and subtomogram averaging. The findings illuminate the role of α-actinin in relaying tension between adjacent sarcomeres. See the article by Burgoyne et al. on pages 15534–15539. Image courtesy of Pradeep K. Luther.
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© 2019. Published under the PNAS license.
Submission history
Published online: July 12, 2019
Published in issue: July 30, 2019
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Acknowledgments
We thank Ray Tobler, Fernando Racimo, Chris Turney, Bastien Llamas, Kieren Mitchell, Yassine Souilmi, and Murray Cox for providing useful comments on the manuscript. We also thank Julien Soubrier and Damien Fordham for help in designing the figures. J.C.T. and A.C. are supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grants and a Laureate Fellowship (A.C.).
Notes
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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