This CAREER project will examine the evolutionary history of populations in the Americas. DNA from both ancient and living individuals will be integrated to characterize evolutionary processes and population dynamics before and after European contact, including the biological and social consequences of adapting to changing environments and pathogens, the adoption of agriculture, and the shift from living in small groups to large interconnected cities. To build a comprehensive picture of local population histories, the project will utilize ancient DNA from human civilizations throughout the Americas in combination with state-of-the-art computational methods and archaeological contexts. The project will also support several integrated educational goals. The investigator will establish an intensive summer research program, bringing together participants from indigenous communities with local undergraduates. Collaborators and students will not only contribute to the specific research aims but also help develop an interactive public website about the ancient lineages of the Americas. This resource will not only reveal ancient social, demographic, and evolutionary histories but also allow LatinX users to explore their own ancestry.
By utilizing population-level whole genomes from both ancient and modern individuals, this project will use comparative statistical and empirical methods to reveal novel genomic features that putatively underlay adaptive phenotypes as they evolved through time, discover ancient migrations on both regional and continental levels, and investigate the evolutionary impact of European contact on indigenous populations. Furthermore, the deep coverage whole genomes generated from this study will provide a reference panel for the people of the Americas, which will uncover rare alleles and genomic features unique to each region. These findings will be placed into a more complex demographic framework to provide a richer characterization of these evolutionary adaptations, while elucidating nuanced demographic histories complicated by disease and colonization. This will serve to establish the greater use and power of ancient DNA to characterize important aspects of evolutionary and cultural events, which might otherwise remain intractable, and thereby deepen the integration of genetics with anthropological theory.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
