Collaborative Research: Time transect of ancient genomes of Indigenous North Americans

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This project will use community-based methods along with advances in biotechnology and population genetics to study the evolution of Indigenous peoples of North America during the past 5,000 years. As the time period under study was a period of social transformation, the project evaluates the genomic impact of changes in social structures that leave signatures in human genomes. The project will serve as a model of integration of Indigenous knowledge with genomics to investigate the evolution of populations in North America prior to European contact. The project also supports a program for the training of Indigenous students and community members in genomic theory and analyses. The Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) program runs an annual workshop to provide hands-on experience in molecular biology, bioinformatics, and other genomics-related fields. The program provides a support network for Indigenous students in the sciences and also functions as an incubator of ideas on ethical and social implications of genomic research that involves Indigenous communities. The long-term goal of the SING program is to increase the number of Indigenous researchers and community members serving as leaders in careers involving the sciences.The project examines how, prior to European colonization, dynamic social processes of populations of North America have influenced human genomes through time. Specifically, whole-genome sequences will be generated from ancient individuals spanning five millennia in the Pacific Northwest. With Indigenous knowledge as a foundation, a temporal analysis of population composition will be performed on the sequences to assess demographic histories and demographic events in the region. The project will also evaluate the impacts of social structure and culturally mediated mate exchange on the evolution of genomes from the Indigenous peoples studied. The project expands the potential for integrating anthropological and genomic information to learn how culture and biology interact in human evolutionary history. This project is jointly funded by the Biological Anthropology and Arctic Social Science Programs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.