Charting the development of human populations in the north and south of the Mediterranean region
The Mediterranean is the birthplace of ancient peoples and cultures, but has it acted as a bridge or a barrier in the genetic history of northern and southern populations? Gene flow and population structure on the north and south shores of the Mediterranean form the basis of the work published recently by the Human Population Genetics research group, directed by Pedro Moral of the Department of Animal Biology at the University of Barcelona. The research, published in two separate articles in BMC Evolutionary Biology and the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, covers one of the widest geographical areas and most diverse population samples studied to date in the Mediterranean region and reveals differences in the genetic structure of the populations inhabiting the north and south shores.
The Mediterranean is the birthplace of ancient peoples and cultures, but has it acted as a bridge or a barrier in the genetic history of northern and southern populations? Gene flow and population structure on the north and south shores of the Mediterranean form the basis of the work published recently by the Human Population Genetics research group, directed by Pedro Moral of the Department of Animal Biology at the University of Barcelona. The research, published in two separate articles in BMC Evolutionary Biology and the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, covers one of the widest geographical areas and most diverse population samples studied to date in the Mediterranean region and reveals differences in the genetic structure of the populations inhabiting the north and south shores.
«The genetic history of populations will only be fully understood when we have a more complete understanding of the architecture and variation of the human genome. The Mediterranean, in particular, is a highly complex area, and studying the genetic variability of its populations is a major scientific challenge”, explains Pedro Moral, director of the project. The first article, published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, reveals new data about the genetic structure of human populations on both Mediterranean shores and gene flow across the Sahara desert. In this study, the group tracked the genetic footprint of a set of polymorphisms located in and around the genomic regions of the coagulation factors FVII and FXII, which are associated with the prediction of risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. The population sample consisted of 687 individuals from countries in the Mediterranean Basin (Spain, France, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and from non-Mediterranean groups (Ivory Coast and Bolivia).