Genetic Basis of Human Population Differences

We developed a new method to detect genes and biological functions in which populations most diverge from a hypothetical ancestral state and apply our method to data from human populations of African, European and Asian origin. Not only we validate our approach by detecting strong signals in known targets of selection, but our genome-wide scan reveals several previously unknown candidates for contributing to population-specific traits. Genes related to nervous system development and behavior may have been under recent selection in all populations and we found a high divergence in genes related to the male reproductive system in the African populations, which might be related to known higher testosterone levels in African-Americans. This page provides the supplementary material previously described in:

de Magalhaes JP, Matsuda A (2012) Genome-wide patterns of genetic distances reveal candidate loci contributing to human population-specific traits. Annals of Human Genetics 76:142-158.

Raw results:

supplemental_tables.zip, zipped file with all significant genes and GO categories for all populations.

Perlegen_cutoff_005.zip, zipped file with Perlegen data using 5% cutoff for minor allele frequency.
Perlegen_cutoff_025.zip, zipped file with Perlegen data using 25% cutoff for minor allele frequency.

HapMap_cutoff_005.zip, zipped file with HapMap data using 5% cutoff for minor allele frequency.
HapMap_cutoff_025.zip, zipped file with HapMap data using 25% cutoff for minor allele frequency.