genome-wide scans for selection

Pickrell, J., Coop, G., Novembre, J., Kudaravalli, S., Li, J., Absher, D., Srinivasan, B., Barsh, G., Myers, R., Feldman, M., & Pritchard, J. (2009). Signals of recent positive selection in a worldwide sample of human populations Genome Research DOI: 10.1101/gr.087577.108 I pointed yesterday to a new paper in Genome Research taking a genome-wide look at the signatures of recent natural selection in a worldwide sample of humans. I promised a more thorough analysis of this paper today, but I see Razib at Gene Expression has already done a fine job of that. Razib's post covers the bulk of…

I'll hopefully have more time to write about this tomorrow, but for now I'll simply suggest that you go and read the free full text PDF of this advance online manuscript in Genome Research. This is the most important recent paper in the field of human evolutionary genetics - a thorough and careful analysis of the signatures of positive natural selection left in our genome by the last 10-40,000 years of adaptation, using a population sample that is far broader than those used in previous studies (53 populations rather than 4). I covered some of the approaches used in the paper in this post on…

Note: I'm introducing Do It Yourself as a new and hopefully semi-regular section on Genetic Future. The aim is to provide readers with instructions on how to access online resources for sequence analysis - an activity traditionally restricted to researchers, but one that will no doubt become more common as more and more people begin to access and interpret their own genetic data. In this post I'll introduce the brand new HGDP Selection Browser, a tool for exploring traces of recent positive selection in the human genome produced by researchers at the University of Chicago. Introduction: the…