The Genetic Structure and East-West Population Admixture in Northwest China Inferred From Genome-Wide Array Genotyping

Abstract

Northwest China is a contacting region for East and West Eurasia and an important center for investigating the migration and admixture history of human populations. However, the comprehensive genetic structure and admixture history of the Altaic speaking populations and Hui group in Northwest China were still not fully characterized due to insufficient sampling and the lack of genome-wide data. Thus, We genotyped genome-wide SNPs for 140 individuals from five Chinese Mongolic, Turkic speaking groups including Dongxiang, Bonan, Yugur, and Salar, as well as the Hui group. Analysis based on allele-sharing and haplotype-sharing were used to elucidate the population history of Northwest Chinese populations, including PCA, ADMIXTURE, pairwise Fst genetic distance, f-statistics, qpWave/qpAdm and ALDER, fineSTRUCTURE and GLOBETROTTER. We observed Dongxiang, Bonan, Yugur, Salar, and Hui people were admixed populations deriving ancestry from both East and West Eurasians, with the proportions of West Eurasian related contributions ranging from 9 to 15%. The genetic admixture was probably driven by male-biased migration- showing a higher frequency of West Eurasian related Y chromosomal lineages than that of mtDNA detected in Northwest China. ALDER-based admixture and haplotype-based GLOBETROTTER showed this observed West Eurasian admixture signal was introduced into East Eurasia approximately 700 ∼1,000 years ago. Generally, our findings provided supporting evidence that the flourish transcontinental communication between East and West Eurasia played a vital role in the genetic formation of northwest Chinese populations.

Genomic Insights Into the Unique Demographic History and Genetic Structure of Five Hmong-Mien-Speaking Miao and Yao Populations in Southwest China

“…The ancient southern Chinese rice farmers finally have developed into several ancestral populations for different linguistic families in East and Southeast Asia, including Hmong-Mien, Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, and Austronesian (Zhao, 2010). Indeed, Recent genetic studies based on genome-wide data from modern (Huang et al, 2018;Ren et al, 2019;He et al, 2020He et al, , 2021aHe et al, ,b, 2022aLu et al, 2020;Bin et al, 2021;Ma et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2022) and ancient populations (Yang et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2021c) have demonstrated complex genetic structure in southern China. Wang et al (2022) have identified the genetic substructure between inland and coastal Tai-Kadai people.…”

Comprehensive evaluations of individual discrimination, kinship analysis, genetic relationship exploration and biogeographic origin prediction in Chinese Dongxiang group by a 60-plex DIP panel

“…The PCA analyses based on individual-level and population-level, the MDS analyses with F ST and D A genetic distances also confirmed the close genetic relationships between Dongxiang group and other East Asian populations. Previous researches based on various genetic markers also indicated that Dongxiang group had closer genetic distances with Chinese other groups, such as the Xibo and Salar groups [ 16 ], Tibetan ethnic group [ 16 , 33 ], Hui, Bonan and Yugur groups [ 34 ].…”

Genetic history of esophageal cancer group in southwestern China revealed by Y‐chromosome STRs and genomic evolutionary connection analysis

“…However, the northern part of Sichuan is a well-known high-incidence area for EC in China [ 23 ], and there is a significant difference in the incidence rates between high- and low-prevalence areas [ 24 ]. While population genetic studies in China often focus on minority ethnic groups [ [25] , [26] , [27] , [28] ], there is still a relative lack of research on the influencing factors, genetic background, and origins behind the high prevalence of EC among the Han population in the Sichuan region.…”