Admixed EUR-EAS population

Apparently, an admixed population where the admixture event happened 120 generations ago can be useful for admixture mapping, and for studying diseases that differ in prevalence between Europeans and East Asians. For some reason, my university is not giving me full text access which is frustrating.

A Genome-wide Analysis of Admixture in Uyghurs and a High-Density Admixture Map for Disease-Gene Discovery.

Am J Hum Genet. 2008 Aug 27. [Epub ahead of print]

Xu S, Jin L.

Abstract: Following up on our previous study, we conducted a genome-wide analysis of admixture for two Uyghur population samples (HGDP-UG and PanAsia-UG), collected from the northern and southern regions of Xinjiang in China, respectively. Both HGDP-UG and PanAsia-UG showed a substantial admixture of East-Asian (EAS) and European (EUR) ancestries, with an empirical estimation of ancestry contribution of 53:47 (EAS:EUR) and 48:52 for HGDP-UG and PanAsia-UG, respectively. The effective admixture time under a model with a single pulse of admixture was estimated as 110 generations and 129 generations, or admixture events occurred about 2200 and 2580 years ago for HGDP-UG and PanAsia-UG, respectively, assuming an average of 20 yr per generation. Despite Uyghurs' earlier history compared to other admixture populations, admixture mapping, holds promise for this population, because of its large size and its mixture of ancestry from different continents. We screened multiple databases and identified a genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism panel that can distinguish EAS and EUR ancestry of chromosomal segments in Uyghurs. The panel contains 8150 ancestry-informative markers (AIMs) showing large frequency differences between EAS and EUR populations (F(ST) greater than 0.25, mean F(ST) = 0.43) but small frequency differences (7999 AIMs validated) within both populations (F(ST) less than 0.05, mean F(ST) less than 0.01). We evaluated the effectiveness of this admixture map for localizing disease genes in two Uyghur populations. To our knowledge, our map constitutes the first practical resource for admixture mapping in Uyghurs, and it will enable studies of diseases showing differences in genetic risk between EUR and EAS populations.