Origins of the Island Melanesians

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This research uses genetic variation to trace the origins of the peoples residing in the Pacific Islands that spread southeast from New Guinea into near and remote Oceania. By using high-resolution data from the human mitochondrial DNA genome, the natives of these Islands and of New Guinea will be compared and contrasted with the surrounding populations in Polynesia, Micronesia, Indonesia, Southeast and Southwest Asia. Through these comparisons, links between the peoples of these regions can be established and the origins of each population can be ascertained. This research is particularly aimed at investigating the links between language and genetic variation. While language and DNA are not physically linked together, they do reside in the same individual, and language undoubtedly plays some role in mate acquisition. Therefore, the researchers will investigate whether languages that are grouped together into higher order language families (e.g. Austronesian and Papuan) coincide with genetic groupings of individuals in the Pacific and the surrounding areas. This approach can be extended to any part of the planet, and to other behaviors besides language, and indeed to other species. This study makes use of previously collected samples, collected by the investigator and collaborators, and greatly increases the level of genetic resolution through collection of significantly longer DNA sequences. The research brings together linguistic, cultural, geographic, biological and genetic data to construct a picture of the initial and subsequent peoplings of Melanesia, and to determine the origins of these diverse populations. This work also brings together a team of a dozen experts on the Pacific to analyze the results and construct the population genetic models. Undergraduate and graduate students will be directly involved in the data collection and analysis of the data, continuing a long tradition in the Merriwether lab of involving undergraduates directly in molecular anthropological research.