Fine-Scale Population Admixture Landscape of Tai–Kadai-Speaking Maonan in Southwest China Inferred From Genome-Wide SNP Data

Abstract

Guizhou Province harbors extensive ethnolinguistic and cultural diversity with Sino-Tibetan-, Hmong–Mien-, and Tai–Kadai-speaking populations. However, previous genetic analyses mainly focused on the genetic admixture history of the former two linguistic groups. The admixture history of Tai–Kadai-speaking populations in Guizhou needed to be characterized further. Thus, we genotyped genome-wide SNP data from 41 Tai–Kadai-speaking Maonan people and made a comprehensive population genetic analysis to explore their genetic origin and admixture history based on the pattern of the sharing alleles and haplotypes. We found a genetic affinity among geographically different Tai–Kadai-speaking populations, especially for Guizhou Maonan people and reference Maonan from Guangxi. Furthermore, formal tests based on the f3/f4-statistics further identified an adjacent connection between Maonan and geographically adjacent Hmong–Mien and Sino-Tibetan people, which was consistent with their historically documented shared material culture (Zhang et al., iScience, 2020, 23, 101032). Fitted qpAdm-based two-way admixture models with ancestral sources from northern and southern East Asians demonstrated that Maonan people were an admixed population with primary ancestry related to Guangxi historical people and a minor proportion of ancestry from Northeast Asians, consistent with their linguistically supported southern China origin. Here, we presented the landscape of genetic structure and diversity of Maonan people and a simple demographic model for their evolutionary process. Further whole-genome-sequence–based projects can be presented with more detailed information about the population history and adaptative history of the Guizhou Maonan people.

Genome-wide allele and haplotype-sharing patterns suggested one unique Hmong–Mein-related lineage and biological adaptation history in Southwest China

“…The complex human admixture history in Eastern Eurasia has resulted in the formation of Mongolic-, Turkic-, and Tungusic-speaking populations in present-day northern East Asia, Sino-Tibetan (ST)-speaking populations across East Asia, Hmong–Mien (HM), Tai–Kadai (TK), Austronesian (AN), and Austroasiatic (AA)-speaking populations in southern East Asia and Southeast Asia. Several comprehensive studies have been conducted to characterize East Asia’s linguistic and genetic history [ 1 – 7 ]. These studies found that geographic isolation, population expansion, and cultural interaction have shaped the genetic and linguistic landscape of modern and ancient Chinese populations [ 5 , 8 , 9 ].…”

Differentiated genomic footprints and connections inferred from 440 Hmong-Mien genomes suggest their isolation and long-distance migration

“…To explore the genetic diversity in the context of all East Asian modern and ancient reference populations, we merged our data with the publicly available modern and ancient people from worldwide populations included in the AADR (HO and 1240K datasets) [43] and our previous studies based on the Illumina microarray [13,20,21,37,38,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69]. The high-density dataset was formed by merging all Illumina datasets, also referred to as the Illumina high-density dataset, which included 717,228 SNPs.…”

“…To analyze the complete admixture and interaction landscape between HM people and other ancestral source groups, we merged our dataset with ancient eastern Eurasians included in the 1240K dataset. The Illumina reference populations included two AA Blang and Wa, nine Mongolic-speaking Baoan, Dongxiang, Mongolian, and Yugur, Sinitic-speaking Han and Hui populations from Shaanxi, Sichuan, Gansu, Guizhou, and Fujian provinces, six TB-speaking Pumi, Bai, Hani, Tibetan and Tujia, one Tungusic Manchu, and two Turkicspeaking Kazakh and Salar (Figure 1d) [13,20,21,37,38,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69]. The HO modern reference populations included 33 TK people from 26 populations in China and Southeast Asia, 27 Han Chinese people from 6 populations, 276 TB people from 30 Chinese and Southeast Asian populations, 224 AA people from 18 populations, 115 AN people from 13 populations, 30 Japanese and 6 Korean, 140 Mongolic people from 18 populations, 62 Tungusic people from 62 populations [18,40,41].…”

Genetic substructure of Guizhou Tai-Kadai-speaking people inferred from genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms data

“…The genetic profile of the Hainan Li from the southernmost part of China was less affected by Neolithic agricultural expansion or historical migration from northern China (He et al, 2020). Since the multiple southward expansion and migration of rice farming populations, the formation of the modern Southeast Asian people was greatly influenced by the populations from southern China (Lipson et al, 2018;Bin et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2021;Wang T. et al, 2021;Chen et al, 2022). Previous studies found a close genetic relationship between the Tai-Kadai-and Austronesian-speaking populations in Thailand by mitochondrial DNA (Kutanan et al, 2018), which further indicated a close relationship between the proto-Tai-Kadai and Austronesian-speaking people (Kutanan et al, 2021).…”