Université de Fribourg

Low prevalence of lactase persistence in bronze age europe indicates ongoing strong selection over the last 3,000 years

Burger, Joachim ; Link, Vivian ; Blöcher, Jens ; Schulz, Anna ; Sell, Christian ; Pochon, Zoé ; Diekmann, Yoan ; Žegarac, Aleksandra ; Hofmanová, Zuzana ; Winkelbach, Laura ; Reyna-Blanco, Carlos S. ; Bieker, Vanessa ; Orschiedt, Jörg ; Brinker, Ute ; Scheu, Amelie ; Leuenberger, Christoph ; Bertino, Thomas S. ; Bollongino, Ruth ; Lidke, Gundula ; Stefanović, Sofija ; Jantzen, Detlef ; Kaiser, Elke ; Terberger, Thomas ; Thomas, Mark G. ; Veeramah, Krishna R. ; Wegmann, Daniel

In: Current Biology, 2020, p. -

Lactase persistence (LP), the continued expression of lactase into adulthood, is the most strongly selected single gene trait over the last 10,000 years in multiple human populations. It has been posited that the primary allele causing LP among Eurasians, rs4988235-A [1], only rose to appreciable frequencies during the Bronze and Iron Ages [2, 3], long after humans started consuming milk from...

Université de Fribourg

Atlas: analysis tools for low-depth and ancient samples

Link, Vivian ; Kousathanas, Athanasios ; Veeramah, Krishna ; Sell, Christian ; Scheu, Amelie ; Wegmann, Daniel

In: bioRxiv, 2017, p. 105346

Summary: Post-mortem damage (PMD) obstructs the proper analysis of ancient DNA samples and can currently only be addressed by removing or down-weighting potentially damaged data. Here we present ATLAS, a suite of methods to accurately genotype and estimate genetic diversity from ancient samples, while accounting for PMD. It works directly from raw BAM files and enables the building of...

Université de Fribourg

Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans

Hofmanová, Zuzana ; Kreutzer, Susanne ; Hellenthal, Garrett ; Sell, Christian ; Diekmann, Yoan ; Díez-del-Molino, David ; Dorp, Lucy van ; López, Saioa ; Kousathanas, Athanasios ; Link, Vivian ; Kirsanow, Karola ; Cassidy, Lara M. ; Martiniano, Rui ; Strobel, Melanie ; Scheu, Amelie ; Kotsakis, Kostas ; Halstead, Paul ; Triantaphyllou, Sevi ; Kyparissi-Apostolika, Nina ; Urem-Kotsou, Dushka ; Ziota, Christina ; Adaktylou, Fotini ; Gopalan, Shyamalika ; Bobo, Dean M. ; Winkelbach, Laura ; Blöcher, Jens ; Unterländer, Martina ; Leuenberger, Christoph ; Çilingiroğlu, Çiler ; Horejs, Barbara ; Gerritsen, Fokke ; Shennan, Stephen J. ; Bradley, Daniel G. ; Currat, Mathias ; Veeramah, Krishna R. ; Wegmann, Daniel ; Thomas, Mark G. ; Papageorgopoulou, Christina ; Burger, Joachim

In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016, vol. 113, no. 25, p. 6886–6891

Farming and sedentism first appeared in southwestern Asia during the early Holocene and later spread to neighboring regions, including Europe, along multiple dispersal routes. Conspicuous uncertainties remain about the relative roles of migration, cultural diffusion, and admixture with local foragers in the early Neolithization of Europe. Here we present paleogenomic data for five Neolithic...