Maize genetic diversity and human languages in Mesoamerica

A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examines how human activity shapes the genetic diversity of maize in the Americas. The authors used publicly available genotyping and passport data from approximately 2,000 traditional maize varieties, more than 500 whole genome sequences of humans from Mexico, and indigenous linguistic maps doi.org. Maize is a staple crop of great cultural importance to indigenous peoples of the Americas and cannot survive or disperse without farmers.

The work quantifies anthropogenic effects, which often remain unmeasured in studies of population structure and environmental features doi.org.

Weak overall structure

Maize shows very little overall genetic structure. The authors point to the effectiveness of indigenous farmers in moving and mixing maize populations doi.org. Principal components of maize diversity correlate with human genetic diversity. However, linear modeling suggests little additional impact of human population structure beyond shared geography doi.org.

Language and specific loci

Differences in maize diversity are often patterned by language at the local level, but genome-wide effects at larger spatial scales are weak doi.org. Despite this weak global signal, linguistic GWAS, outlier FST analyses and selection scans identified loci associated with specific languages doi.org.

Using landscape-level sequencing data, the authors describe how anthropogenic factors have shaped patterns of maize genetic diversity across Mesoamerica doi.org.

Maize diversity in its center of origin weakly follows human language groups, study of 2,000 varieties

Weak overall structure

Language and specific loci

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