Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution

@article{citeulike:2173341, abstract = {Genomic surveys in humans identify a large amount of recent positive selection. Using the 3.9-million HapMap SNP dataset, we found that selection has accelerated greatly during the last 40,000 years. We tested the null hypothesis that the observed age distribution of recent positively selected linkage blocks is consistent with a constant rate of adaptive substitution during human evolution. We show that a constant rate high enough to explain the number of recently selected variants would predict (i) site heterozygosity at least 10-fold lower than is observed in humans, (ii) a strong relationship of heterozygosity and local recombination rate, which is not observed in humans, (iii) an implausibly high number of adaptive substitutions between humans and chimpanzees, and (iv) nearly 100 times the observed number of high-frequency linkage disequilibrium blocks. Larger populations generate more new selected mutations, and we show the consistency of the observed data with the historical pattern of human population growth. We consider human demographic growth to be linked with past changes in human cultures and ecologies. Both processes have contributed to the extraordinarily rapid recent genetic evolution of our species. 10.1073/pnas.0707650104}, author = {Hawks, John and Wang, Eric T. and Cochran, Gregory M. and Harpending, Henry C. and Moyzis, Robert K. }, citeulike-article-id = {2339884}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.0707650104}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, keywords = {evolution, human, positive, selection}, month = {December}, number = {52}, pages = {20753--20758}, posted-at = {2008-02-06 09:19:00}, priority = {2}, title = {Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0707650104}, volume = {104}, year = {2007} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2173341 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2339884 TI - Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences VL - 104 IS - 52 SP - 20753 EP - 20758 N2 - Genomic surveys in humans identify a large amount of recent positive selection. Using the 3.9-million HapMap SNP dataset, we found that selection has accelerated greatly during the last 40,000 years. We tested the null hypothesis that the observed age distribution of recent positively selected linkage blocks is consistent with a constant rate of adaptive substitution during human evolution. We show that a constant rate high enough to explain the number of recently selected variants would predict (i) site heterozygosity at least 10-fold lower than is observed in humans, (ii) a strong relationship of heterozygosity and local recombination rate, which is not observed in humans, (iii) an implausibly high number of adaptive substitutions between humans and chimpanzees, and (iv) nearly 100 times the observed number of high-frequency linkage disequilibrium blocks. Larger populations generate more new selected mutations, and we show the consistency of the observed data with the historical pattern of human population growth. We consider human demographic growth to be linked with past changes in human cultures and ecologies. Both processes have contributed to the extraordinarily rapid recent genetic evolution of our species. 10.1073/pnas.0707650104 KW - evolution KW - human KW - positive KW - selection AU - Hawks, John AU - Wang, Eric AU - Cochran, Gregory AU - Harpending, Henry AU - Moyzis, Robert PY - 2007/December// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0707650104 ER -