Ancient DNA supports that the evolution of Skin Tone in East Asians intensified after their split with Native Americans

Abstract

Skin tone has been deeply studied in European populations both using modern and ancient DNA. However, other populations are underrepresented in such studies. One such population is East Asians, for which, interestingly, it has been claimed to evolve light skin tones in parallel to Europeans. Moreover, it is not clear whether this happened before or after their split from Native Americans. Over the last few years, several studies have sequenced hundreds of ancient genomes belonging to East Asians ancient populations. Additionally, some variants have been associated with light skin in East Asians. To shed some light, I applied a Polygenic Risk Score for some of the variants associated with light skin, in 237 modern Native Americans and East Asian individuals and in more than 700 East Asians ancient samples. The results suggest that this phenotype may have started to evolve in the ancestors of East Asians and Native Americans but intensified after their split.