RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Inferring human population size and separation history from multiple genome sequences JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 005348 DO 10.1101/005348 A1 Stephan Schiffels A1 Richard Durbin YR 2014 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/05/21/005348.abstract AB The availability of complete human genome sequences from populations across the world has given rise to new population genetic inference methods that explicitly model their ancestral relationship under recombination and mutation. So far, application of these methods to evolutionary history more recent than 20–30 thousand years ago and to population separations has been limited. Here we present a new method that overcomes these shortcomings. The Multiple Sequentially Markovian Coalescent (MSMC) analyses the observed pattern of mutations in multiple individuals, focusing on the first coalescence between any two individuals. Results from applying MSMC to genome sequences from nine populations across the world suggest that the genetic separation of non-African ancestors from African Yoruban ancestors started long before 50,000 years ago, and give information about human population history as recently as 2,000 years ago, including the bottleneck in the peopling of the Americas, and separations within Africa, East Asia and Europe.