Yann Klimentidis' Weblog

This is a very short paper and their methods are fairly simplistic. They pick some SNPs from the literature, and count the number of homozygous SNPs related to various pigmentation phenotypes. H...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2012/03/predicting-pigmentation-phenotypes-with.html

In a natural fertility population, these authors find that carriers of BRCA mutations have more children, shorter birth intervals, a later end to child-bearing, and "excess post-reproductive mort...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2011/10/antagonistic-pleiotropy-case-for-brca.html

Here's a news story about a talk given at the latest ASHG/ICHG meeting. Bustamante et al. have been looking at admixture among Puerto Ricans (apparently the latest addition to the 1000 Genomes pr...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2011/10/taino-and-african-ancestry-in-puerto.html

Here's an interesting post from John Hawks' blog about a magazine article about running, evolution (and hunting?) enthusiasts who try to see how hard it would be to track a pronghorn in New Mexi...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2011/06/persistence-hunting-is-it-really.html

I thought this was a funny quote from an interesting article in Nature discussing the fact, that despite the identification of many disease-relevant proteins, "75% of protein research still focus...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2011/02/scientists-like-to-fondle-their.html

Here's a very interesting video of a discussion between Razib Khan and Milford Wolpoff. They cover a pretty wide range of topics, but mostly centered on the multiregional model of human evolution...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2011/02/wolpoff-interviewed-by-razib.html

The latest issue of Nature has a piece by Jared Diamond about the diabetes epidemic in India, and how some aspects of its pathology are unique among Indians as compared to other groups. Medicin...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2011/01/jared-diamond-on-type-2-diabetes-in.html

The interesting finding here is that diversity in the LCT/MCM6 region is increased rather than reduced among those who are lactose tolerant compared to those who are lactose intolerant. Unlike i...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2011/01/selection-can-increase-genetic.html

Interesting, albeit speculative, hypothesis for the origins of the selective advantage associated with lactase persistence. Basically, looks like there is evidence for increased reliance on milk ...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/10/howwhy-did-selection-for-lactase.html

We are pretty confident that we know what signatures of selection look like for some loci in humans (skin color, lactase etc...) but how about less clear-cut/subtle cases which may represent the ...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/10/selection-in-fruitflies-what-kind-of.html

Here they do a GWAS for a continuous/refined eye phenotype based on hue and saturation. The authors find three new loci in addition to the other known loci, and are able to explain 50% of the var...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-loci-to-explain-eye-color.html

Some interesting hypotheses about the relationships between skin pigmentation, vitamin D, and immune response in Europe. Diet, disease and pigment variation in humans. Med Hypotheses. 2010 Apr ...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/04/diet-disease-and-pigment-variation-in.html

...that's the question that pops into my mind after reading the title and abstract. I wonder if they genotyped the elite of the elite (Bolt, Powell) or just the "elite"? It looks like they did: ...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/03/does-usain-bolt-lack-actn3-r577x.html

The authors report on their finding of different mutations in the same gene MC1R affecting different molecular pathways on the way to lighter pigmentation in lizards. There are several likely ex...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-than-one-molecular-way-to.html

I'm not yet able to get full text access to this paper, but after looking into the related literature, I was suprised to see that there is quite a lot out there. Given that variation in MC1R was...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/03/chinese-prefer-darker-skinned-pigs-and.html

They examined the association between 75 SNPs in 24 genes and skin, eye and hair color among 789 people of various ethnic backgrounds. Since this is for forensic purposes, they were looking for a...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/02/predicting-hair-eye-and-skin-color-from.html

...especially in Africa, SE Europe, and parts of Asia. It seems like their genetic information consists of the four SNPs that are so far known to be associated with lactase persistence. A world...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/02/predicting-lactose-persistence-from.html

10 breeds, 21,000 SNPs, breed-specific Fst. Their most notable hits: HMGA2 and IGF1R (size) SILV, MITF (coat color and texture) CDH9, DRD5, HTR2A (behavior) SOX9 (skeletal morphology) FTO, SLC2A...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/01/signatures-of-selection-in-dog-breeds.html

Continuing on the theme from the last post, here is a paper that just came out in PLoS Biology. It seems to come to the same conclusion as the Science one that used ancient mtDNA ...sort of. The ...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-on-genetics-of-european-farmers-vs.html

I'm back, and will try to be more regular about posting. This paper came out a few months ago in Science and I've been meaning to look at it for a while. They examine the Fst in mtDNA sequence be...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2010/01/genetics-of-hunter-gatherers-and-early.html

They are basically seeing whether there are many private haplotypes in the Uyghur population compared to East Asian and European populations. They don't find this to be the case, thus suggesting ...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2009/09/are-uyghurs-recent-or-ancient.html

via this story at Nature News , their estimate based on Y chromosome is 100-200 new mutations per genome per generation, or about one mutation in every 30 million bases, which is in agreement wit...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2009/09/human-mutation-rate-estimate.html

First of all, gotta love the term "Performance Enhanding Polymorphisms" (PEPs). This is a review paper describing what we know about the genetics of athletic performance. They focus on ACE, ACTN...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2009/08/got-some-performance-enhancing.html

See Dienekes' blog post about a new paper that purports the origin of the lactase persistence allele to be somewhere in the Austria/Czech Republic area, around 7,500 years ago. From the abstract...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2009/08/geographical-origin-and-dating-of.html

An ancestry informative marker set for determining continental origin: validation and extension using human genome diversity panels. Nassir R, Kosoy R, Tian C, White PA, Butler LM, Silva G, Kitt...

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2009/08/set-of-aims-that-can-distinguish-within.html