{"633367":{"#nid":"633367","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Evolution Accelerated","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe European conquest and colonization of the Americas in the age of Christopher Columbus was a tragic and bloody enterprise that enslaved millions of African people and devastated Native American populations.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EIn many well-documented ways, this was among the darkest epochs of human history. But the massive demographic upheaval also had profound effects at the genomic level, resulting in the rapid adaptive evolution of the human beings who have lived in this part of the world for the last 500 years, according to \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/jordan.biology.gatech.edu\/page\/\u0022\u003EKing Jordan\u003C\/a\u003E and his research partners.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Five hundred years is like batting an eye in the evolution of humans,\u0026rdquo; says Jordan, professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he directs the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/bioinformatics.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EBioinformatics Graduate Program\u003C\/a\u003E. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s less than one percent of the time that has passed since modern humans first left Africa.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe three distinct ancestral source populations that converged in the Americas \u0026ndash; Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans \u0026ndash; had been separated and adapting to their own local environments for tens of thousands of years since their initial migration out of Africa.\u0026nbsp; Jordan and his colleagues hypothesized that when these diverse populations came together and exchanged genetic material in the Americas \u0026ndash; the process referred to as admixture \u0026ndash; the previously adapted variants were able to rapidly increase in frequency based on their utility in the new environment.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThey refer to this rapid evolution as admixture-enabled selection and they write about it in the latest research paper from the Jordan lab, \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/genomebiology.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s13059-020-1946-2\u0022\u003E\u0026ldquo;Admixture-enabled selection for rapid adaptive evolution in the Americas,\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/a\u003E published in the journal \u003Cem\u003EGenome Biology\u003C\/em\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;A big question in the lab was, can populations that have been separated for millennia come back together and form completely new, novel genomes that have never been seen before \u0026ndash; can you adapt in 500 years?\u0026rdquo; says Emily Norris, lead author of the paper, who graduated with her PhD from Georgia Tech in November 2019. \u0026ldquo;Our premise is, yes, that it has happened.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ETo test their hypothesis, the researchers analyzed whole genome sequences (utilizing data from the 1000 Genome Project) sampled from admixed Latin American populations in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico. And their results showed evidence of admixture-enabled polygenic selection in these populations.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Given the ubiquity of admixture among previously diverged populations, it should be considered as a fundamental mechanism for the acceleration of human evolution,\u0026rdquo; the researchers write.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ve developed a new way of looking at natural selection that is predicated upon the reality of admixture,\u0026rdquo; says Jordan, who is also a faculty researcher in the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Tech.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;In admixture-enabled evolution, you\u0026rsquo;re introducing novel variants at high frequencies \u0026ndash; you\u0026rsquo;re creating combinations of variants that had never existed before on the same genomic background,\u0026rdquo; Jordan adds. \u0026ldquo;So, instead of introducing adaptation at low frequency via mutation \u0026ndash; a slow process constrained by the rate and introduction of mutation into populations \u0026ndash; admixture-enabled selection facilitates rapid adaptive evolution.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EAnd it isn\u0026rsquo;t unique to the Americas. Human evolution has been constantly characterized by long periods of genetic divergence, after populations have become physically and reproductively isolated, followed by a period of unification, or reunification, and interbreeding and the resulting genetic admixture.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Admixture represents a fundamental mechanism by which human adaptation has been sped up,\u0026rdquo; Jordan asserts. \u0026ldquo;And it\u0026rsquo;s happened many, many times across human evolution.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EIn addition to Norris and Jordan, the other authors were Lavanya Rishishwar (research scientists, former grad student in Jordan lab), Aroon Chande (graduate researcher in Jordan lab), Andrew Conley (research scientist in Jordan lab), Kaixon Ye (assistant professor, University of Georgia), and\u0026nbsp;Augusto Valderrama-Aguirre (Universidad Santiago de Cali, Colombia).\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"New study shows evidence of rapid adaptive human evolution in the Americas"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ENew study shows evidence of rapid adaptive human evolution in the Americas\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"New study shows evidence of rapid adaptive human evolution in the Americas"}],"uid":"28153","created_gmt":"2020-03-06 20:40:01","changed_gmt":"2020-03-06 20:42:57","author":"Jerry Grillo","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2020-03-06T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2020-03-06T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"633366":{"id":"633366","type":"image","title":"Emily Norris and King Jordan","body":null,"created":"1583526232","gmt_created":"2020-03-06 20:23:52","changed":"1583526232","gmt_changed":"2020-03-06 20:23:52","alt":"","file":{"fid":"240995","name":"emily and king.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/emily%20and%20king.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/emily%20and%20king.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":535017,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/emily%20and%20king.jpg?itok=zwVm2y3e"}}},"media_ids":["633366"],"groups":[{"id":"1292","name":"Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB)"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"173581","name":"go-COS"},{"id":"126571","name":"go-PetitInstitute"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nCommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["Jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}