RESUMEN

A genome is a mosaic of chromosome fragments from ancestors who existed some arbitrary number of generations earlier. Here, we reconstruct the genome of Hans Jonatan (HJ), born in the Caribbean in 1784 to an enslaved African mother and European father. HJ migrated to Iceland in 1802, married and had two children. We genotyped 182 of his 788 descendants using single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) chips and whole-genome sequenced (WGS) 20 of them. Using these data, we reconstructed 38% of HJ's maternal genome and inferred that his mother was from the region spanned by Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon.

Asunto(s)

Población Negra/genética , Personas Esclavizadas , Genoma Humano , Haploidia , Linaje , Composición Familiar/historia , Estudio de Asociación del Genoma Completo/métodos , Historia del Siglo XVIII , Humanos , Islandia , Masculino , Polimorfismo de Nucleótido Simple , Análisis de Secuencia de ADN/métodos , Migrantes , Indias Occidentales

RESUMEN

The transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in world history. However, the origins of the enslaved Africans and their admixture dynamics remain unclear. To investigate the demographic history of African-descendant Marron populations, we generated genome-wide data (4.3 million markers) from 107 individuals from three African-descendant populations in South America, as well as 124 individuals from six west African populations. Throughout the Americas, thousands of enslaved Africans managed to escape captivity and establish lasting communities, such as the Noir Marron. We find that this population has the highest proportion of African ancestry (∼98%) of any African-descendant population analyzed to date, presumably because of centuries of genetic isolation. By contrast, African-descendant populations in Brazil and Colombia harbor substantially more European and Native American ancestry as a result of their complex admixture histories. Using ancestry tract-length analysis, we detect different dates for the European admixture events in the African-Colombian (1749 CE; confidence interval [CI]: 1737-1764) and African-Brazilian (1796 CE; CI: 1789-1804) populations in our dataset, consistent with the historically attested earlier influx of Africans into Colombia. Furthermore, we find evidence for sex-specific admixture patterns, resulting from predominantly European paternal gene flow. Finally, we detect strong genetic links between the African-descendant populations and specific source populations in Africa on the basis of haplotype sharing patterns. Although the Noir Marron and African-Colombians show stronger affinities with African populations from the Bight of Benin and the Gold Coast, the African-Brazilian population from Rio de Janeiro has greater genetic affinity with Bantu-speaking populations from the Bight of Biafra and west central Africa.

Asunto(s)

Población Negra/genética , África , Brasil , Femenino , Guyana Francesa , Flujo Génico/genética , Genética de Población , Estudio de Asociación del Genoma Completo/métodos , Haplotipos , Hispánicos o Latinos/genética , Humanos , Masculino , Polimorfismo de Nucleótido Simple/genética , Suriname , Población Blanca/genética