The identification of signals of very recent positive selection provides
information about the adaptation of modern humans to local conditions. We report
here on a genome-wide scan for signals of very recent positive selection in favor
of variants that have not yet reached fixation. We describe a new analytical
method for scanning single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data for signals of
recent selection, and apply this to data from the International HapMap Project.
In all three continental groups we find widespread signals of recent positive
selection. Most signals are region-specific, though a significant excess are
shared across groups. Contrary to some earlier low resolution studies that
suggested a paucity of recent selection in sub-Saharan Africans, we find that by
some measures our strongest signals of selection are from the Yoruba population.
Finally, since these signals indicate the existence of genetic variants that have
substantially different fitnesses, they must indicate loci that are the source of
significant phenotypic variation. Though the relevant phenotypes are generally
not known, such loci should be of particular interest in mapping studies of
complex traits. For this purpose we have developed a set of SNPs that can be used
to tag the strongest approximately 250 signals of recent selection in each
population.

A map of recent positive selection in the human genome.

The iHS tool is a predictor developed for identifying heat shock proteins (HSPs) among their six different functional types using reduced amino acid alphabet information. The tool was able to achieve an overall success rate of more than 87% in identifying the functional types of HSPs using a stringent benchmark dataset. 

iHS

Topic

Detail

Publications

Download and documentation