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Abstract
BackgroundThe term “Columbian Exchange” refers to the massive transfer of life between the Afro-Eurasian and American hemispheres that was precipitated by Columbus’ voyage to the New World. The Columbian Exchange is widely appreciated by historians, social scientists and economists as a major turning point that had profound and lasting effects on the trajectory of human history and development.Presentation of the hypothesisI propose that the Columbian Exchange should also be appreciated by biologists for its role in the creation of novel human genomes that have been shaped by rapid adaptive evolution. Specifically, I hypothesize that the process of human genome evolution stimulated by the Columbian Exchange was based in part on selective sweeps of introgressed haplotypes from ancestral populations, many of which possessed pre-evolved adaptive utility based on regional-specific fitness and health effects.Testing the hypothesisTesting of this hypothesis will require comparative analysis of genome sequences from putative ancestral source populations, with genomes from modern admixed populations, in order to identify ancestry-specific introgressed haplotypes that exist at higher frequencies in admixed populations than can be expected by chance alone. Investigation of such ancestry-enriched genomic regions can be used to provide clues as to the functional roles of the genes therein and the selective forces that have acted to increase their frequency in the population.Implications of the hypothesisCritical interrogation of this hypothesis could serve to underscore the important role of introgression as a source of adaptive alleles and as a driver of evolutionary change, and it would highlight the role of admixture in facilitating rapid human evolution.ReviewersThis article was reviewed by Frank Eisenhaber, Lakshminarayan Iyer and Igor B. Rogozin
Highlights
The term “Columbian Exchange” refers to the massive transfer of life between the Afro-Eurasian and American hemispheres that was precipitated by Columbus’ voyage to the New World
Introgression on the scale seen for the three-way population mixing that characterized the Columbian Exchange [7,8,9,10] could have provided multiple adaptive alleles as standing genetic variation at intermediate to high population frequencies
Introgression during the Columbian Exchange provided extensive standing genetic variation to New World populations, much of it with potential adaptive significance, which could have provided the raw material for numerous selective sweeps
Summary
The term “Columbian Exchange” refers to the massive transfer of life between the Afro-Eurasian and American hemispheres that was precipitated by Columbus’ voyage to the New World. From a population genomic perspective, the Columbian Exchange can be considered to have facilitated genetic admixture among three human population groups – African, European and Native American – that had previously evolved separately for many thousands of years [7,8,9,10].
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