Xinjiang,the most northwest provincial administrative area of China,was the area where the oriental people met the occidental.The populations in Xinjiang exhibit very high genetic diversity.Previous study revealed that the eastern Xinjiang populations of the Bronze Age were mixed by the Eastern and the Western Eurasians.However,few studies have been performed to reveal when the population admixture started and how far to the west it reached.In this paper,we studied 148 craniofacial traits of 18 skulls from the Bronze Age Liushui graveyard in Khotan(Keriya County) in the southwest of Xinjiang.Seventeen craniometrical parameters of the Khotan samples were then compared with those of other ancient samples from around Xinjiang using dendrogram cluster analysis,principal components analysis,and multidimensional scaling.The results indicated that population sample of Liushui graveyard was mixed by the Western and Eastern Eurasians with about 79% contribution from the east.Therefore,we demonstrated that population admixture between east and west Eurasia can be traced back to as early as 1000 BC in southwest Xinjiang.
TAN JingZeLI LiMingZHANG JianBoFU WenQing, GUAN HaiJuan2, AO Xue2,WANG LingE1, WU XinHua3, HAN KangXin3, JIN Li1'2 & LI Hui1'2.FU WenQingGUAN HaiJuanAO XueWANG LingEWU XinHuaHAN KangXinJIN Li
Linguistics and genetics always reach similar results in phylogenetic studies of human populations. A previous study found that populations speaking Han Chinese dialects have closer genetic relationships to each other than to neighboring ethnic groups. However, the Pinghua Chinese population from Guangxi is an exception. We have reported that northern Pinghua people are genetically related to populations speaking Daic languages. In this study, we further studied the southern Pinghua population. The Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA haplogroup components and network analysis indicated that northern and southern Pinghua populations were genetically different. Therefore, we concluded that the Pinghua speakers may have various origins, even though Pinghua dialects are similar. Pinghua dialects might have originated when the Daic or Hmongic speakers from different regions learnt to speak the same Chinese dialect hundreds of years ago. Speakers of one language do not always have just one origin.
Yan LUShang-Ling PANShu-Ming QINZheng-Dong QINChuan-Chao WANGRui-Jing GANHui LIGenographic Consortium
Y chromosome haplogroup O3-M122 is the most prevalent haplogroup in East Asia, and provides an ideal tool for dissecting primary dispersals of the East Asians. Most of the sub-haplogroups of O3-M122 have been sufficiently investigated except for O3al c-002611, despite its great prevalence and huge population, especially in Han Chinese. In this study, we identified 508 individuals with haplogroup O3alc-002611 out of 7801 males from 117 East and Southeast Asian populations, typed at two newly discovered downstream Y-SNP markers and ten commonly used Y-STRs. Defined by SNPs IMS-JST002611 （in short, 002611）, F11, and F238, three lineages internal to haplogroup O3alc-002611 have distinct geographical distributions. Furthermore, Y-STR diversity shows a general south-to- north decline, which is consistent with the prehistorically northward migration of the other O3-M122 lineages. The northward migration ofhaplogroup O3alc-002611 started about 13 thousand years ago （KYA）. The expansions of subclades F11 and F238 in ancient Han Chinese began about 5 and 7 KYA immediately after the separation between the ancestors of the Han Chinese and Tibeto-Burman.
The Utsat people do not belong to one of the recognized ethnic groups in Hainan, China. Some historical literature and linguistic classification confirm a close cultural relationship between the Utsat and Cham people; however, the genetic relationship between these two populations is not known. In the present study, we typed paternal Y chromosome and maternal mitochondrial （mt） DNA markers in 102 Utsat people to gain a better understanding of the genetic history of this population. High frequencies of the Y chromosome haplogroup O 1a＊-M119 and mtDNA lineages D4, F2a, Fib, Fla1, B5a, M8a, M＊, D5, and B4a exhibit a pattern similar to that seen in neighboring indigenous populations. Cluster analyses （principal component analyses and networks） of the Utsat, Cham, and other ethnic groups in East Asia indicate that the Utsat are much closer to the Hainan indigenous ethnic groups than to the Cham and other mainland southeast Asian populations. These findings suggest that the origins of the Utsat likely involved massive assimilation of indigenous ethnic groups. During the assimilation process, the language of Utsat has been structurally changed to a tonal language; however, their Islamic beliefs may have helped to keep their culture and self-identification.
Histone methylation is a kind of important epigenetic modification which occurs on the lysine residue or arginine residue of histone tails（Zhang and Reinberg,2001）.It takes part in multiple biological processes,including gene expression,genomic stability,stem cell maturity,genetic imprinting,mitosis and development（Fischle et al.,2005）.
In the field of anthropology, the uniparerttally inherited Y chromosome has long been used to trace the paternal lineage of the populations and to understand differences in migration and population genetics between males and females, with additional advantages of small effective population size, suf- ficient markers, and population-specific haplotype distribution （Jobling and Tyler-Smith, 1995; Jin and Su, 2000; Underhill et al., 2000）. Many such population studies have rested on the assumption that all the Y chromosome markers in the non- recombination regions are selectively neutral （Jobling and Tyler-Smith, 2003）.
The paternally inherited Y chromosome has been widely used in forensics for personal identification, in anthropology and population genetics to understand origin and migration of human populations, and also in medical and clinical studies （Wang and Li, 2013; Wang et al., 2014）. There are two kinds of extremely useful markers in Y chromosome, single nucle- otide polymorphism （SNP） and short tandem repeats （STRs）. With a very low mutation rate on the order of 3.0 x 10-8 mutations/nucleotide/generation （Xue et al., 2009）, SNP markers have been used in constructing a robust phylogeny tree linking all the Y chromosome lineages from world pop- ulations （Karafet et al., 2008）. Those lineages determined by the pattern of SNPs are called haplogroups. That is to say, we have to genotype an appropriate number of SNPs in order to assign a given Y chromosome to a haplogroup. Compared with SNPs, the mutation rates of STR markers are about four to five orders of magnitude higher （Gusmgo et al., 2005; Ballantyne et al., 2010）. Typing STR has advantages of saving time and cost compared with typing SNPs in phylogenetic assignment of a Y chromosome （Wang et al., 2010）. A set of STR values for an individual is called a haplotype. Because of the disparity in mutation rates between SNP and STR, one SNP haplogroup could actually comprise many STR haplotypes （Wang et al., 2010）. It is most interesting that STR variability is clustered more by haplogroups than by populations （Bosch et al., 1999; Behar et al., 2004）, which indicates that STR haplotypes could be used to infer the haplogroup information of a given Y chromosome. There has been increasing interest in this cost- effective strategy for predicting the haplogroup from a given STR haplotype when SNP data are unavailable. For instance, Vadim Urasin＇s YPredictor （http：//predictor.ydna.ru/）, Whit Atheys＇ haplogroup predictor （http：//www.hprg.com/hapest5/） （Athey, 2005, 2006）, and haplogroup classifier of Arizona University （Sc
Chuan-Chao WangLing-Xiang WangRukesh ShresthaShaoqing WenManfei ZhangXinzhu TongLi JinHui Li
Dispute between agriculture and initial population expansion in Neolithic Time has been in suspense for a long time.Agriculture first appeared in the Fertile Crescent of West Asia about 11–12 thousand years ago（kya）,with domesticating few wild plant and animal species.There is also evidence of the cultivation of rice and millet in Yangtze and Yellow River Basins of China approximately 9 kya.
Chuan-Chao WangYunzhi HuangXue'er YuChun ChenLi JinHui Li
