Search

Recently, an eDNA metabarcoding data set was used to describe northern high-latitude vegetation during the past 50,000 years. Here, Zobel et al. use the data set to examine how the abundance of key plant mutualistic traits changed during this period and discuss possible environmental drivers.

Analysis of ancient human genomes from a Neolithic collective gallery grave in northern France points to population discontinuity and turnover between the third and fourth millennium BC.

Draft genomes of two south-central Siberian individuals dating to 24,000 and 17,000 years ago show that they are genetically closely related to modern-day western Eurasians and Native Americans but not to east Asians; the results have implications for our understanding of the origins of Native Americans.

The first genome sequence of an ancient human is reported. It comes from an approximately 4,000-year-old permafrost-preserved hair from a male from the first known culture to settle in Greenland. Functional single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) assessment is used to assign possible phenotypic characteristics and high-confidence SNPs are compared to those of contemporary populations to find those most closely related to the individual.

During much of the last ice age, continental ice sheets prevented humans from migrating into North America from Siberia; an environmental reconstruction of the corridor that opened up between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets reveals that it would have been inhospitable to the initial colonizing humans, who therefore probably entered North America by a different route.

Kennewick Man, a 8,500-year-old male human skeleton discovered in Washington state, USA, has been the subject of scientific and legal controversy; here a DNA analysis shows that Kennewick Man is closer to modern Native Americans than to any other extant population worldwide.

An Ancient Beringian population from Late Pleistocene Alaska and the ancestors of other Native American groups descended from a single founding population that diversified around twenty thousand years ago.

Whole-genome sequencing of individuals from 125 populations provides insight into patterns of genetic diversity, natural selection and human demographic history during the peopling of Eurasia and finds evidence for genetic vestiges of an early expansion of modern humans out of Africa in Papuans.

Maize originated in southern Mexico from domestication of the wild grass teosinte, and diffused throughout the Americas. Sequenced DNA from archaeological samples spanning 6,000 years, documents the diffusion route and reveals the genes that were specifically selected for climatic and cultural adaptation to the US Southwest.

A collaborative study initiated by the sovereign nation of Picuris Pueblo in the Northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico addresses gaps in traditional knowledge and furthers understanding of their population history and ancestry.

Whole-genome sequence data for 108 individuals representing 28 language groups across Australia and five language groups for Papua New Guinea suggests that Aboriginal Australians and Papuans diverged from Eurasian populations approximately 60–100 thousand years ago, following a single out-of-Africa dispersal and subsequent admixture with archaic populations.

An analysis involving the shotgun sequencing of more than 300 ancient genomes from Eurasia reveals a deep east–west genetic divide from the Black Sea to the Baltic, and provides insight into the distinct effects of the Neolithic transition on either side of this boundary.

Analyses of imputed ancient genomes and of samples from the UK Biobank indicate that ancient selection and migration were large contributors to the distribution of phenotypic diversity in present-day Europeans.

Single-cell analyses in a reporter mouse model and human tissues identify a rare cell subset that produces erythropoietin in vivo, opening potential new avenues for research in erythropoiesis and oxygen homeostasis.

Integrated data, including 100 human genomes from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Early Bronze Age periods show that two major population turnovers occurred over just 1,000 years in Neolithic Denmark, resulting in dramatic changes in the genes, diet and physical appearance of the local people, as well as the landscape in which they lived.

Analysis of a large ancient genome dataset shows that genetic risk for multiple sclerosis rose in steppe pastoralists, providing insight into how genetic ancestry from the Neolithic and Bronze Age has shaped modern immune responses.

Environmental DNA from water samples can be used to detect the presence and abundance of aquatic organisms. Here, the authors show that it can also be used to obtain population genetic information from whale sharks in the Arabian Gulf.

Evolved polymerases improve the recovery of ancient DNA.

Protein sequences from fossil tooth enamel of a rhinocerotid from Canada’s High Arctic are used to develop phylogenetic frameworks from a specimen too old to preserve ancient DNA.

By analysing plant and nematode DNA from sites all around the Arctic, it is shown that vegetation before about 10,000 years ago contained more forbs (non-graminoid herbaceous vascular plants) than previously believed, which changes our understanding about the functioning of the diverse northern ecosystem that existed at this time.

A complete pre-agricultural European human genome from a ∼7,000-year-old Mesolithic skeleton suggests the existence of a common genomic signature across western and central Eurasia from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic, and ancestral alleles in several skin pigmentation genes suggest that the light skin of modern Europeans was not yet ubiquitous in Mesolithic times.

Screening shotgun-sequencing data from ancient humans covering 37,000 years of Eurasian history uncovers the widespread presence of ancient bacterial, viral and parasite DNA and zoonotic pathogens coincide with the widespread domestication of livestock.

DNA from ancient wolves spanning 100,000 years sheds light on wolves’ evolutionary history and the genomic origin of dogs.

Nagarajan and colleagues overview the current challenges in microbiome analyses from human cancer samples and discuss the optimal practices for improving the standards of reporting the presence of microbiome species in human cancers.

Ancient DNA analyses reveal that Viking Age migrations from Scandinavia resulted in differential influxes of ancestry to different parts of Europe, and the increased presence of non-local ancestry within Scandinavia.

For most ancient genomes, low sequencing depth restricts genotyping, limiting their study. Here, the authors test imputation performance of ancient human genomes by estimating error rates and potential bias introduced in downstream analyses.

Here, the authors look at present day and medieval genome samples from Northern France to piece together demographic history and population structure across Brittany and the Loire basin.

Population-scale ancient genomics are used to infer ancestry, social structure and pathogen infection in 108 Scandinavian Neolithic individuals from eight megalithic graves and a stone cist, showing that Neolithic plague was widespread.

A large-scale metagenomic analysis of plant and mammal environmental DNA reveals complex ecological changes across the circumpolar region over the past 50,000 years, as biota responded to changing climates, culminating in the postglacial extinction of large mammals and emergence of modern ecosystems.

Analyses of 34 ancient genomes from northeastern Siberia, dating to between 31,000 and 600 years ago, reveal at least three major migration events in the late Pleistocene population history of the region.

The response of marine species to the Pleistocene climate change is largely unknown. Foote et al. find that the bowhead whale tracked shifting habitat at the end of the Pleistocene and increased in effective population size as suitable habitat and population connectivity increased.

Modern female horses are genetically diverse but male horses are relatively homogenous. Lippoldet al. sequence the Y chromosome of nine ancient horses and detect diversity in the ancestral paternal lineage, demonstrating ancient Y-chromosomal DNA sequencing can provide insights into evolution.

Sequences of 137 ancient and 502 modern human genomes illuminate the population history of the Eurasian steppes after the Bronze Age and document the replacement of Indo-European speakers of West Eurasian ancestry by Turkic-speaking groups of East Asian ancestry.

Phytophthora infestanscaused the potato famine in the nineteenth century. Martinet al. sequence the nuclear genomes of five archival samples of the pathogen and compare these to extant specimens allowing the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of P. infestans.

Analysis of two-million-year-old ancient environmental DNA from the Kap København Formation in North Greenland shows there was an open boreal forest with diverse plant and animal species, of which several taxa have not previously been detected at the site, representing an ecosystem that has no present-day analogue.