ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Genetic evidence for natural selection in humans in the contemporary United States.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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41 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 133 citations in OpenAlex.
- Detecting fitness epistasis in recently admixed populations with genome-wide data.BMC genomics · 2020Pooled it
- Genomic insights into natural selection in recent human history.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Article
- Polygenic prediction of human complex traits using ancient DNA.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2025Review
- Socio-economic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- Natural selection on reproductive timing varies by education in twentieth-century Estonia.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Striking Departures from Polygenic Architecture in the Tails of Complex Traits.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Pervasive findings of directional selection realize the promise of ancient DNA to elucidate human adaptation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Unveiling recent and ongoing adaptive selection in human populations.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- A matter of time: Bateman's principles and mating success as count and duration across social strata in contemporary Finland.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Genome-wide analysis identifies genetic effects on reproductive success and ongoing natural selection at the FADS locus.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- Is there still evolution in the human population?Biologia futura · 2022Review
- Human Capital Mediates Natural Selection in Contemporary Humans.Behavior genetics · 2022Article
- GWAS on birth year infant mortality rates provides evidence of recent natural selection.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Novel Evidence Showing the Possible Effect of Environmental Variables on COVID-19 Spread.GeoHealth · 2022Article
- Resource profile and user guide of the Polygenic Index Repository.Nature human behaviour · 2021Article
- Relationship between rice farming and polygenic scores potentially linked to agriculture in China.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Probing the aggregated effects of purifying selection per individual on 1,380 medical phenotypes in the UK Biobank.PLoS genetics · 2021Article
- Human adaptation over the past 40,000 years.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2020Review
- Using genetics for social science.Nature human behaviour · 2020Review
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1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent findings from molecular genetics now make it possible to test directly for natural selection by analyzing whether genetic variants associated with various phenotypes have been under selection. I leverage these findings to construct polygenic scores that use individuals' genotypes to predict their body mass index, educational attainment (EA), glucose concentration, height, schizophrenia, total cholesterol, and (in females) age at menarche. I then examine associations between these scores and fitness to test whether natural selection has been occurring. My study sample includes individuals of European ancestry born between 1931 and 1953 who participated in the Health and Retirement Study, a representative study of the US population. My results imply that natural selection has been slowly favoring lower EA in both females and males, and are suggestive that natural selection may have favored a higher age at menarche in females. For EA, my estimates imply a rate of selection of about -1.5 mo of education per generation (which pales in comparison with the increases in EA observed in contemporary times). Although they cannot be projected over more than one generation, my results provide additional evidence that humans are still evolving-albeit slowly, especially compared with the rapid changes that have occurred over the past few generations due to cultural and environmental factors.
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