RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Inferring adaptive gene-flow in recent African history JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 205252 DO 10.1101/205252 A1 George Busby A1 Ryan Christ A1 Gavin Band A1 Ellen Leffler A1 Quang Si Le A1 Kirk Rockett A1 Dominic Kwiatkowski A1 Chris Spencer YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/11/03/205252.abstract AB Gene-flow from an ancestrally differentiated group has been shown to be a powerful source of selectively advantageous variants. To understand whether recent gene-flow may have contributed to adaptation among humans in sub-Saharan Africa, we applied a novel method to identify deviations in ancestry inferred from genome-wide data in 48 populations. Among the signals of ancestry deviation that we find in the Fula, an historically pastoralist ethnic group from the Gambia, are the region that encodes the lactose persistence phenotype, LCT/MCM6, which has the highest proportion of Eurasian ancestry in the genome. The region with the lowest proportion of non-African ancestry is across DARC, which encodes the Duffy null phenotype and is protective for Plasmodium vivax malaria. In the Jola from the Gambia and a Khoesan speaking group from Namibia we find multiple regions with inferred ancestry deviation including the Major Histocompatibility Complex. Our analysis shows the potential for adaptive gene-flow in recent human history.