Genetic formation of Sui populations in southwest China

Abstract

The Sui people living in Guizhou province have a unique ethnic culture and population history due to their long‐time isolation from other populations. To investigate the genetic structure of Sui populations in different regions of Guizhou, we genotyped 89 individuals from four Sui populations using genome‐wide single nucleotide polymorphisms arrays. We analyzed the data using principal component analysis, ADMIXTURE analysis, f‐statistics, qpWave/qpAdm, TreeMix analysis, fineSTRUCTURE, and GLOBETROTTER. We found that Sui populations in Guizhou were genetically homogeneous and had a close genetic affinity with Tai‐Kadai‐speaking populations, Hmong‐Mien‐speaking Hmong, and some ancient populations from southern China. The Sui populations could be modeled as an admixture of 33.5%–37.9% of Yellow River Basin farmer‐related ancestry and 62.1%–66.5% of Southeast Asian‐related ancestry, indicating that the southward expansion of northern East Asian‐related ancestry influenced the formation of the Tai‐Kadai‐speaking Sui people. Future publications of more ancient genomics in southern China could effectively provide further insight into the demographic history and population structure of the Sui people.