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. 2021 Dec 21:12:795570.
doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.795570. eCollection 2021.

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

Bin Ma  1 , Jinwen Chen  2 , Xiaomin Yang  3 , Jingya Bai  1 , Siwei Ouyang  1 , Xiaodan Mo  1 , Wangsheng Chen  1 , Chuan-Chao Wang  2   3   4 , Xiangjun Hai  1
Affiliations

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

Bin Ma et al. Front Genet. .

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.

Keywords: admixture history; gansu; gene flow; genetic structure; northwest China; steppe population; trans-Eurasia; west Eurasia.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The geographical map of our samples collection.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
The results of ROH calculation. (A) the length distribution; (B) the average length.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Patterns of genetic relationship among published East Asian populations and our newly genotyped five populations inferred from the principal component analysis. (A) East Asians including southern populations and with the West Eurasians; (B) East Asians without southern populations and without the West Eurasians.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
ADMIXTURE analysis result visualization at K = 5 as the corresponding cross-validation error was the lowest. And our studied populations in Gansu were marked by red color.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Phylogenetic tree among our studied populations in Gansu and reference populations in Eurasia. Our samples in Gansu province were marked with red color.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
The heat map of sharing haplotypes and clustering dendrogram by fineSTRUCTURE. DX = Dongxiang. (A) the dendrogram. (B) the heat map of sharing haplotypes.
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
Heatmap results of the outgroup-f 3 statistics of the form f 3 (X, Y; Mbuti). The larger values indicated that they shared more genetic drifts. Here the Outgroup was Mbuti.
FIGURE 8
FIGURE 8
qpAdm based admixture models for the populations in our study in Gansu province. The 2-way admixture models for our Gansu samples were presented when the p values >0.05 at the rank = 1. (A) Hui, Bonan, Yugur, Salar ethnic groups. (B) Dongxiang ethnic group.
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