J Syst Evol

• Research Article •    

Genetic formation of Sui populations in southwest China

Ming‐Xia Xie1†, Xing‐Yue Hu2†, Qi‐Yang Wang1, Zheng Ren1, Yu‐Bo Liu1, Mei‐Qing Yang1, Xiao‐Ye Jin1, Xiao‐Min Yang3, Rui Wang4, Chuan‐Chao Wang3,4,5*, and Jiang Huang1,6*   

  1. 1 Department of Forensic Medicine, Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang 550031, China;
    2 School of International Tourism & Culture, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang 550003, China;
    3 Department of Anthropology and Ethnology, Institute of Anthropology, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Bioanthropology, School of Sociology and Anthropology, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China;
    4 State Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Biology, School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China;
    5 Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Contemporary Anthropology, Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China;
    6 The Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution Monitoring and Disease Control, Ministry of Education, Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang 550031, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.
    *Author for correspondence. Chuan‐Chao Wang. E‐mail: wang@xmu.edu.cn; Jiang Huang. E‐mail: mmm_hj@126.com
  • Received:2023-08-29 Accepted:2024-01-06 Online:2024-02-28

Abstract: The Sui people living in Guizhou province have a unique ethnic culture and population history due to their long-time isolation from other populations. To investigate the genetic structure of Sui populations in different regions of Guizhou, we genotyped 89 individuals from four Sui populations using genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms arrays. We analyzed the data using principal component analysis, ADMIXTURE analysis, f-statistics, qpWave/qpAdm, TreeMix analysis, fineSTRUCTURE, and GLOBETROTTER. We found that Sui populations in Guizhou were genetically homogeneous and had a close genetic affinity with Tai-Kadai-speaking populations, Hmong-Mien-speaking Hmong, and some ancient populations from southern China. The Sui populations could be modeled as an admixture of 33.5%–37.9% of Yellow River Basin farmer-related ancestry and 62.1%–66.5% of Southeast Asian-related ancestry, indicating that the southward expansion of northern East Asian-related ancestry influenced the formation of the Tai-Kadai-speaking Sui people. Future publications of more ancient genomics in southern China could effectively provide further insight into the demographic history and population structure of the Sui people.

Key words: admixture history, ancestry inference, gene chips, population substructure, Sui