ArticleNature communications2021
Different historical generation intervals in human populations inferred from Neanderthal fragment lengths and mutation signatures.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Enhancement of hidden Markov model analyses for improved inference of archaic introgression in modern humans.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- A structured coalescent model reveals deep ancestral structure shared by all modern humans.Nature genetics · 2025Article
- A multidisciplinary overview on the Tupi-speaking people expansion.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Review
- Life history and ancestry of the late Upper Palaeolithic infant from Grotta delle Mura, Italy.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The Evolutionary Interplay of Somatic and Germline Mutation Rates.Annual review of biomedical data science · 2024Review
- Comparative genomic analyses provide new insights into evolutionary history and conservation genomics of gorillas.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Review
- Past human expansions shaped the spatial pattern of Neanderthal ancestry.Science advances · 2023Article
- Evolution of the Mutation Spectrum Across a Mammalian Phylogeny.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Multiple Sources of Uncertainty Confound Inference of Historical Human Generation Times.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- "Evolution of the mutation spectrum across a mammalian phylogeny".bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 Mutational Spectrum.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Limited role of generation time changes in driving the evolution of the mutation spectrum in humans.eLife · 2023Article
- The impact of modern admixture on archaic human ancestry in human populations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Article
- Human generation times across the past 250,000 years.Science advances · 2023Article
- Evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 mutational spectrum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2022Article
- The impact of genetic modifiers on variation in germline mutation rates within and among human populations.Genetics · 2022Article
- Apportioning archaic variants among modern populations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Article
- Population Histories and Genomic Diversity of South American Natives.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
After the main Out-of-Africa event, humans interbred with Neanderthals leaving 1-2% of Neanderthal DNA scattered in small fragments in all non-African genomes today. Here we investigate what can be learned about human demographic processes from the size distribution of these fragments. We observe differences in fragment length across Eurasia with 12% longer fragments in East Asians than West Eurasians. Comparisons between extant populations with ancient samples show that these differences are caused by different rates of decay in length by recombination since the Neanderthal admixture. In concordance, we observe a strong correlation between the average fragment length and the mutation accumulation, similar to what is expected by changing the ages at reproduction as estimated from trio studies. Altogether, our results suggest differences in the generation interval across Eurasia, by up 10-20%, over the past 40,000 years. We use sex-specific mutation signatures to infer whether these changes were driven by shifts in either male or female age at reproduction, or both. We also find that previously reported variation in the mutational spectrum may be largely explained by changes to the generation interval. We conclude that Neanderthal fragment lengths provide unique insight into differences among human populations over recent history.
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