Publicaties

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) plays a crucial role in forensics and population genetics, especially for analysing highly degraded samples. Yet, most mitogenomic reference datasets are still limited to control region (CR) sequences, that have limited discriminatory power. This is particularly true for Belgium, where despite the introduction of new legislation in 2024 to increase the use of mitochondrial DNA in familial searching, comprehensive ...

Genotype imputation from low-pass sequencing data presents unique opportunities for genomic analyses but comes with specific challenges. In this study, we explore the impact of quality filters on genetic ancestry and Polygenic Score (PGS) estimation after imputing 32,769 low-pass genome-wide sequences (LPS) from noninvasive prenatal screening (NIPS) with an average autosomal sequence depth of ∼0.15×. In studies involving ultra-low coverage ...

Human populations have developed distinct genetic adaptations to diet in response to changes in lifestyle and environments in which they live. Particularly contrasting patterns of dietary adaptations are expected in populations living in tropical versus extreme cold environments. This article explores the genetic, dietary, and microbiome-related adaptations in populations of South Asia and the Arctic. We review adaptations related to ...

Determining genetic ancestry of an individual is challenging from poorly preserved or mixed samples that permit only ultra-low coverage sequence at depths less than 0.1 × at target loci. Leveraging recent advances in telomere-to-telomere sequencing of whole genomes with long reads, we develop a new k-mer based method, Y-mer, and show how information from hundreds of thousands of k-mers in distance-based models enables accurate inference of chrY ...

The genetic origin of ethnic groups present in South Asia is complex. Widespread factors such as complex societal caste structure, language shifts, the coexistence of tribal alongside caste populations, and a varied and vast geography augment this complexity. In the face of this complexity, a holistic approach is required for the study of population histories. The isolated Dravidian population, Brahui in Pakistan, represents a remnant of complex ...

The history of human populations has been strongly shaped by admixture events, contributing to patterns of observed genetic diversity across populations. In this study, we introduce the Principal component Ancestry proportions using NNLS Estimation (PANE) method that leverages principal component analysis and non-negative least squares to assess the ancestral compositions of admixed individuals given a large set of populations. Our results show ...

The Roman period saw the empire expand across Europe and the Mediterranean, including much of what is today Great Britain. While there is written evidence of high mobility into and out of Britain for administrators, traders, and the military, the impact of imperialism on local, rural population structure, kinship, and mobility is invisible in the textual record. The extent of genetic change that occurred in Britain during the Roman military ...

The extent of the devastation of the Black Death pandemic (1346-1353) on European populations is known from documentary sources and its bacterial source illuminated by studies of ancient pathogen DNA. What has remained less understood is the effect of the pandemic on human mobility and genetic diversity at the local scale. Here, we report 275 ancient genomes, including 109 with coverage >0.1×, from later medieval and postmedieval ...

Medieval hospitals were founded to provide charity, but poverty and infirmity were broad and socially determined categories and little is known about the residents of these institutions and the pathways that led them there. Combining skeletal, isotopic and genetic data, the authors weave a collective biography of individuals buried at the Hospital of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge. By starting with the physical remains, rather than historical ...