Significant East Asian Affinity of the Sichuan Hui Genomic Structure Suggests the Predominance of the Cultural Diffusion Model in the Genetic Formation Process.

Yan Liu,Didi Yuan,Xing Zou,Guanglin He,Yicheng Wang,Simei Zeng,Yingxiang Li,Renkuan Tang,Gang Chen,Junbao Yang,Peixin Wang,Hongliang Li,Mengge Wang,Shudan Deng

doi:10.3389/fgene.2021.626710

Abstract

The ancestral origin and genomic history of Chinese Hui people remain to be explored due to the paucity of genome-wide data. Some evidence argues that an eastward migration of Central Asians gave rise to modern Hui people, which is referred to as the demic diffusion hypothesis; other evidence favors the cultural diffusion hypothesis, which posits that East Asians adopted Muslim culture to form the modern culturally distinct populations. However, the extent to which the observed genetic structure of the Huis was mediated by the movement of people or the assimilation of Muslim culture also remains highly contentious. Analyses of over 700 K SNPs in 109 western Chinese individuals (49 Sichuan Huis and 60 geographically close Nanchong Hans) together with the available ancient and modern Eurasian sequences allowed us to fully explore the genomic makeup and origin of Hui and neighboring Han populations. The results from PCA, ADMIXTURE, and allele-sharing-based f-statistics revealed a strong genomic affinity between Sichuan Huis and Neolithic-to-modern Northern East Asians, which suggested a massive gene influx from East Asians into the Sichuan Hui people. Three-way admixture models in the qpWave/qpAdm analyses further revealed a small stream of gene influx from western Eurasians into the Sichuan Hui people, which was further directly confirmed via the admixture event from the temporally distinct Western sources to Sichuan Hui people in the qpGraph-based phylogenetic model, suggesting the key role of the cultural diffusion model in the genetic formation of the Sichuan Huis. ALDER-based admixture date estimation showed that this observed western Eurasian admixture signal was introduced into the Sichuan Huis during the historic periods, which was concordant with the extensive western–eastern communication along the Silk Road and historically documented Huis' migration history. In summary, although significant cultural differentiation exists between Hui people and their neighbors, our genomic analysis showed their strong genetic affinity with modern and ancient Northern East Asians. Our results support the hypothesis that the Sichuan Huis arose from a mixture of minor western Eurasian ancestry and predominant East Asian ancestry.

Highlights

And historically supported transcontinental exchange in North China and Northwest China during the past 5,000 years played an important role in the formation of the modern genetic, linguistic, and cultural diversity in East Asian people (Dong et al, 2020)
Boshu Huis were clustered with northern Han Chinese and other Northern East Asian minorities, and Nanchong Hans were loosely clustered and formed a cline that partially overlapped with previously published Han clines
In the Southern East Asian-based principal component analysis (PCA), we observed clear population substructures that were consistent with the language categories, such as the HmongMien and Sino-Tibetan genetic lines being separated from others (Supplementary Figure 3)

Summary

Introduction

And historically supported transcontinental exchange in North China and Northwest China during the past 5,000 years played an important role in the formation of the modern genetic, linguistic, and cultural diversity in East Asian people (Dong et al, 2020). Eastward-migrating steppe pastoralists and their descendants gradually admixed with or were replaced by local indigenous steppe nomads and formed the multioriginated Scythian pastoralist tribes (Damgaard et al, 2018), as well as the laterformed Xiongnu/Xianbei/Rouran/Uyghur/Turkic/Mongolic confederations. These eastern Eurasian nomadic pastoralist empires became the dominant groups, and their subsequent westward migrations reshaped the genetic landscape of populations from the Eurasian steppe once again (Damgaard et al, 2018; Jeong et al, 2020). In terms of language diversity, modern populations belonging to Indo-European, Uralic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic families/groups have been widely distributed in Eurasia (Wang and Robbeets, 2020)

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