The genetic history of Australia, Oceania, and Southeast Asia 1

Published on April 21, 2015   31 min


Other Talks in the Series: Human Population Genetics II

My name is Mark Stoneking. I'm at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. In the presentation, I will be discussing the genetic history of Australia, Oceania, and Southeast Asia.
A brief outline of the presentation is as follows. I will first present a brief introduction to the region followed by discussion of particular topics that are of interest, since the region and its history is too broad to cover everything in detail. So these topics will include single versus multiple waves of dispersal, referring to the initial colonization of the region, genetic evidence for contact between Australia and India after initial colonization of Australia, and inferences from genetics about the impact of the Austronesian expansion.
A brief mention of the different types of genetic markers that I will be referring to. These include mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. This is maternally inherited, so you get all of your mitochondrial DNA from your mother and none from your father, and therefore mitochondrial DNA provides insights into maternal history. Another type of genetic marker I will refer to is the Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is inherited from fathers to sons, and therefore provides insights into the paternal history of human populations. And finally, I will also make mention of genome-wide data, either sequence data or single nucleotide polymorphism, so-called SNP data. Genome-wide data is particularly useful for gaining insights into admixture events as well as more detailed insights into the demographic history of human populations.

The genetic history of Australia, Oceania, and Southeast Asia 1

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