Extensive Ethnolinguistic Diversity in Vietnam Reflects Multiple Sources of Genetic Diversity

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Vietnam features extensive ethnolinguistic diversity and occupies a key position in Mainland Southeast Asia. Yet, the genetic diversity of Vietnam remains relatively unexplored, especially with genome-wide data, because previous studies have focused mainly on the majority Kinh group. Here, we analyze newly generated genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism data for the Kinh and 21 additional ethnic groups in Vietnam, encompassing all five major language families in Mainland Southeast Asia. In addition to analyzing the allele and haplotype sharing within the Vietnamese groups, we incorporate published data from both nearby modern populations and ancient samples for comparison. In contrast to previous studies that suggested a largely indigenous origin for Vietnamese genetic diversity, we find that Vietnamese ethnolinguistic groups harbor multiple sources of genetic diversity that likely reflect different sources for the ancestry associated with each language family. However, linguistic diversity does not completely match genetic diversity: There have been extensive interactions between the Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai groups; different Austro-Asiatic groups show different affinities with other ethnolinguistic groups; and we identified a likely case of cultural diffusion in which some Austro-Asiatic groups shifted to Austronesian languages during the past 2,500 years. Overall, our results highlight the importance of genome-wide data from dense sampling of ethnolinguistic groups in providing new insights into the genetic diversity and history of an ethnolinguistically diverse region, such as Vietnam.</jats:p>

Reconstructing the human genetic history of mainland Southeast Asia: insights from genome-wide data from Thailand and Laos

“…Similar to other SA-related groups, the SouthernThai_AN are more related to AA-speaking Cambodian and Khmu_Katu_AA groups in the PCA (Figure 2) and in the qpGraph received ancestry from a N_Indian ancestor (~27%) and an admixed ancestor with Cambodian (~90%) and Atayal (10%) ancestry ( Figure 5B). This pattern is in agreement with the AN groups from Vietnam (Liu et al, 2020); our results support the MSEA origin of the SouthernThai_AN group, via cultural diffusion involving local AA groups.…”

“…The Hmong show genetic signatures of isolation, such as higher IBD sharing within groups ( Supplementary Figure 7), in agreement with a previous study of uniparental markers (Kutanan et al, 2020), whereas the IuMien show affinities not only with the Hmong, but also with TK speaking groups and ST speaking Lahu from both Thailand and China (Figure 4). The differential affinities of HM groups to TK and ST groups has also been shown in two recent genome-wide studies (Liu et al, 2020;Xia et al, 2019). In addition, the sharing of features between IuMien (but not Hmong_HM) and Sinitic languages (Blench, 2008) indicates that IuMien similarities with other East Asian populations is evident both genetically and linguistically.…”

“…the ADMIXTURE result for K = 7 (Supplementary Figure 5) and the IBD sharing results ( Supplementary Figure 7), in agreement with a previous study of uniparental markers (Kutanan et al, 2020). There is strong ancestry sharing between the Thai Lahu and Chinese Lahu (Figures 3-4), and the Chinese Lahu are moreover genetically similar to Vietnamese Lahu (Liu et al, 2020), indicating a close relationship among Lahu from MSEA and China.…”

“…However, prior to the movement of prehistoric AA-related groups southward, present-day MSEA (both upland and lowland) was home to hunter-gatherers whose descendants are genetically related to groups in southern Thailand and west Malaysia, such as the Maniq and Jehai (Jinam et al, 2012). The Neolithic farmer expansion did not completely replace the hunter-gatherers but admixed with some of them, as reflected by both ancient and modern DNA studies (Lipson et al, 2018;McColl et al, 2018;Kutanan et al, 2017;Liu et al, 2020).…”

Fine‐scale genetic structure of Tujia and central Han Chinese revealing massive genetic admixture under language borrowing

“…In addition, it has strong language contact and lateral transfers with the surrounding Sinitic, Hmong‐Mien, and Tai‐Kadai (Lu et al, 2019; Man et al, 2019; Yu et al, 2019), these phenomena are referred to as language borrowing, which was widely existed and evidenced among Tujia language and the surrounding Sinitic or Hmong‐Mien (Zhang et al, 2019). Larger numbers of genetic, archaeological and linguistic studies (Jeong et al, 2018; Kutanan et al, 2018; Juhasz et al, 2019; Liu et al, 2020; Wang et al, 2019) have further illustrated that a significant statistical association between genetic structure and human cultural shift (e.g., language, agriculture, dietary, and so on) is caused by demic diffusion, not by simple cultural diffusion. Thus, we assumed that these extensive lexical borrowings in Tujia might have resulted from population migration, interaction, and subsequent genetic admixture with the surrounding or incoming populations, and may further influence the formation of the genetic structure of Tujia.…”