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Biomedical subjects

Caitlin Uren

Publications and source records attributed to Caitlin Uren.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Post-colonial human admixture and natural selection: disentangling signals in complex demographic contexts.

Natural selection and admixture are defining population genetic features of modern human populations, yet their interaction has only recently emerged as a major focus in human evolutionary genomics. While the influence of natural selection on population structure and trait diversity is well established, the ways in which selective pressures operate after admixture have historically received far less attention. In this review, we synthesise the latest progress in understanding post-admixture selection and highlight case studies that illustrate how novel environments, pathogen exposure, dietary shifts and socio-historical transformations have driven genomic adaptation. We conclude by identifying key gaps that remain in the field with the aim of motivating future research and facilitating new insights into how admixture and selection jointly shape human diversity.

Journal Article

Recovering the precolonial population structure of Khoe-San descendant populations.

San populations from Botswana and Namibia retain exceptional linguistic, cultural, and genetic diversity, but few Khoisan-speaking groups remain south of the Kalahari Desert. However, historically, far southern Africa was home to many San and Khoekhoe groups. Popular opinion often implies that such populations do not contribute to the ancestry of contemporary South Africans. Here, we characterize the genetic ancestry of self-identified South African Coloured groups and reconstruct precolonial and colonial population structures from 620 newly sampled individuals. These groups retain the majority of Khoe-San genetic ancestry (>48%), suggesting the persistence of Khoe-San ancestry to the present day. By isolating the Khoe-San ancestry component, we show that it is intermediate between the ≠Khomani San and Nama and distinct from Kalahari Khoe-San populations. We also find that signatures of the Indian Ocean slave trade can be traced to Indonesian islands such as Sulawesi, Java, and Flores, while the South Asian ancestry is regionally nonspecific.

Humans