Abstract
Hmong–Mien (HM) -speaking populations, widely distributed in South China, the north of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, have experienced different settlement environments, dietary habits, and pathogenic exposure. However, their specific biological adaptation remained largely uncharacterized, which is important in the population evolutionary genetics and Trans-Omics for regional Precision Medicine. Besides, the origin and genetic diversity of HM people and their phylogenetic relationship with surrounding modern and ancient populations are also unknown. Here, we reported genome-wide SNPs in 52 representative Miao people and combined them with 144 HM people from 13 geographically representative populations to characterize the full genetic admixture and adaptive landscape of HM speakers. We found that obvious genetic substructures existed in geographically different HM populations; one localized in the HM clines, and others possessed affinity with Han Chinese. We also identified one new ancestral lineage specifically existed in HM people, which spatially distributed from Sichuan and Guizhou in the north to Thailand in the south. The sharing patterns of the newly identified homogenous ancestry component combined the estimated admixture times via the decay of linkage disequilibrium and haplotype sharing in GLOBETROTTER suggested that the modern HM-speaking populations originated from Southwest China and migrated southward in the historic period, which is consistent with the reconstructed phenomena of linguistic and archeological documents. Additionally, we identified specific adaptive signatures associated with several important human nervous system biological functions. Our pilot work emphasized the importance of anthropologically informed sampling and deeply genetic structure reconstruction via whole-genome sequencing in the next step in the deep Chinese Population Genomic Diversity Project (CPGDP), especially in the regions with rich ethnolinguistic diversity.
Highlights
The Yungui Plateau and surrounding regions are the most ethnolinguistically diverse regions of China with a population size of approximately 0.205 billion (2020 census), which is the home to many ethnic groups, including the major population of Han Chinese and minorities of Hmong–Mien (HM), Tai–Kadai (TK), and Tibeto-Burman (TB)
The important step occurred around 2009, and several genetic analyses based on genome-wide SNPs, including mapping Asian genetic diversity reported by the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) Pan-Asian SNP consortium, have identified population stratification among linguistically different Asian populations and genetic differentiation between northern and southern Han Chinese populations (Chen et al, 2009; Consortium et al, 2009; Xu et al, 2009)
We identified different natural selection candidates (NBPF9, RNA-binding motif singlestranded interacting protein 3 (RBMS3)-AS3, CNTNAP3B, NBPF10, CYP2D6, transgelin 3 (TAGLN3), isthmin 1 (ISM1), RBMS3, KCNJ3, ADAM metallopeptidase domain 12 (ADAM12), GALNT13, phosphoglucomutase 5 pseudogene 2 (PGM5P2), CYP2A6, MTMR7, and SMARCA2) associated with several different biological functions in Miao people compared with other East Asians
Summary
The Yungui Plateau and surrounding regions are the most ethnolinguistically diverse regions of China with a population size of approximately 0.205 billion (2020 census), which is the home to many ethnic groups, including the major population of Han Chinese and minorities of Hmong–Mien (HM), Tai–Kadai (TK), and Tibeto-Burman (TB). This region is a mountainous and rugged area, consisting of Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan and most parts of Tibet Autonomous Region, which is characterized by the Sichuan Basin in the northeast, the karstic Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau in the east, and the Hengduan Mountains in the west, and the majority of the region is drained by the Yangtze River. The complete picture of genetic diversity of ethnolinguistically diverse populations in this region remained uncharacterized
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