The new study offers a stunning
example of human genetic diversity and adaptation to the underwater environment, says Anna Di Rienzo, a human population geneticist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the research.
The results confirm Africa as the
centre of human genetic diversity and, together with linguistic data, reveal a rich pattern of human migrations within the continent.
«Even in the best databases that exist today, we know we have only a small
sampling of human genetic diversity,» says Michael Bamshad, who studies genetic variation at the University of Washington, Seattle, and helped craft ASHG's recommendations.
The data, which represent the first comprehensive population - level whole - genome
study of human genetic diversity in Australia, suggests that the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians and Papua New Guineans diverged from Eurasian populations between 51,000 and 72,000 years ago and reveals traces of genetic material from ancient humans such as Denisovans and an unknown hominin group.
«The high - resolution
portrait of human genetic diversity afforded by these studies allows new inferences to be made about our migration out of Africa,» write Serena Tucci and Joshua Akey in an accompanying News & Views article.