What is it about?
The native Māori settlement of New Zealand about 600 years ago represents an end-point of a long journey of island-hopping voyages across vast stretches of open sea -- the last of the great human migrations. Nearly 250 years ago, European settlers discovered this remote island country in the South Pacific, and thus began the mixing of two cultures that were literally oceans apart. The Māori population of today presents an exciting opportunity to study recent ancestral population admixture. In this study a validated set of 10 markers was constructed and used to estimate the average ancestral proportions of Māori and European populations in a Māori tribe from Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
The study represents the first genome-wide analysis of a Māori population, and indicates that there is a good chance that Māori people remain in New Zealand with no recent European ancestry. This paper also introduces a method of population sub-sampling that helps to reduce the necessary sample size of populations, as well as substantially reducing the occurrence of noisy results that are typical in Genome-Wide Association Studies.
Perspectives
Almost the entirety of this research was carried out in 2007, with minor adjustments made to data analysis over the course of subsequent years after feedback from other collaborators. I hope that the publication of this paper will encourage other New Zealand researchers to start (or continue) genetic studies of the Māori population. It has been quite a challenge to go through the discussion process involved in bringing this research to be published, and risks remain from exposing research on the native Māori population to the harsh light of public discourse. I have persisted with this process because I believe that the wave breaking carried out from this research will eventually lead to a huge ocean of knowledge, dotted with thousands of amazing and unexpected discoveries.
Dr David A Eccles
Malaghan Institute of Medical Research
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Estimation of genomic ancestry in admixed populations, F1000Research, April 2016, Faculty of 1000, Ltd.,
DOI: 10.12688/f1000research.8319.1.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
