166 ancient genes reveal the life experience of East Asians

"Dark eyes, black hair and yellow skin are the descendants of dragons forever.

Tracing back to the source, as East Asians, who were our ancestors and how did they come here? What is the relationship between the various ethnic groups?

On February 22, the academic journal "Nature" published a research paper by Professor Wang Chuanchao's group from the Institute of Anthropology of Xiamen University and the team of Professor David Reich from Harvard Medical School.

Screenshot of the paper webpage

"Snowball" type "questioning"

"Who am I? Where do I come from?" Plato's ultimate philosophical proposition still puzzles mankind.

Around 2015, Wang Chuanchao, who was full of curiosity about the life experience of East Asians, led the team to launch this scientific research project.

The research team has obtained a large number of samples of ancient people from archaeological sites in Shaanxi, China and Taiwan, China.

As a result, they focused on a broader geographical space, expanding from China to the surrounding Russian Far East, Japan and other places, and the number of teams joining the research continued to increase.

The analysis of samples from the Russian Far East found that these samples have a relatively close relationship with the ancient humans beside Lake Baikal, which inspired them to further question.

"From a geographical point of view, the Russian Far East is almost the end of human migration, and further north and east are the Bering Strait and the Pacific Ocean that are not suitable for survival.

In 2019, Wang Chuanchao invited researchers from Mongolia to join the team and obtained samples from local archaeological sites to verify this hypothesis.

In this 6-year study, it is precisely the continuous questioning of scientific issues.

The largest "East Asian" archaeology

The research has obtained important conclusions such as "Han-Tibetan homology", "Austronesian island and Zhuang-Dong homology".

At the same time, the study also provides direct evidence for the hypothesis that the Austronesian population originated in the southern part of mainland China, that is, "Austronesian and Dong are of the same origin.

It is understood that this is the largest scale of archaeological genomics research in East Asia currently carried out in China.

Second-generation sequencing meritorious service

In the view of the researchers, the success of this research is directly due to the rapid development of second-generation sequencing technology.

Wang Chuanchao was deeply impressed.

The high-throughput sequencing technology developed around 2010 has greatly improved efficiency and reduced costs, opening the door to a new world for ancient human genomics research.

“You can imagine that ancient humans were buried in the soil after their deaths.
Their DNA was continuously degraded and corroded, and there were still many microorganisms and pathogens in the soil.
” Wang Chuanchao pointed out, “When we unearth them today, we actually have to To restore this person’s DNA information from a pile of degraded and contaminated bones, the new sequencing technology helps us obtain useful information from a large amount of data.
"

In addition, the ultra-clean laboratory is also a "standard" for ancient human genomics research.
The Institute of Anthropology of Xiamen University established this "weapon" in 2017.
Researchers need to wear protective clothing, goggles, masks, gloves, and headgear, and pass through the air shower to enter this "temporal tunnel" to meet ancient humans.

Wang Chuanchao and others work in the ancient DNA ultra-clean laboratory (photo courtesy of the research team)

Regarding the results of this research, Professor Yang Yimin of the School of Humanities of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences commented: "This is only the beginning of the story.
With the publication of more ancient genome results, I believe that the face of human migration on the land of China in the past 10,000 years will increase.
The clearer.
” (Source: Gan Xiao, China Science News)

Link to the paper: org/10.
1038/s41586-021-03336-2" target="_blank">https://doi.
org/10.
1038/s41586-021-03336-2