14.07.2023

New Paper published in PNAS Nexus by our former fellow Dr. Hannes Rathmann, our former Scientific Coordinator Prof. Dr. Hugo Reyes-Centeno and our PI Prof. Dr. Katerina Harvati and colleagues

Inferring human neutral genetic variation from craniodental phenotypes

TL;DR: Craniodental features are routinely used in bioarchaeology, forensics, and paleoanthropology to infer genetic relatedness across human remains. However, it is unclear whether certain data types preserve neutral evolutionary signals to a greater degree than others. In this study, we test the relative utility of the most widely used metric and nonmetric data types, employing an extensive computational genotype–phenotype comparison across worldwide modern populations. Our results reveal that the data types capture different amounts of neutral genomic variation, with dental nonmetrics and cranial metrics showing the highest signals and dental metrics displaying the lowest. Importantly, combining different data types maximizes genotypic coverage over different loci compared with using them separately. Therefore, we recommend prioritizing combined data sets for more accurate craniodental inferences in future research.
 

Here is the link to the full article including the link to the supplementary material: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/7/pgad217/7217023