Genomic Insight Into the Population Structure and Admixture History of Tai-Kadai-Speaking Sui People in Southwest China

Xiaoyun Bin; Rui Wang; Youyi Huang; Rongyao Wei; Kongyang Zhu; Xiaomin Yang; Hao Ma; Guanglin He; Jianxin Guo; Jing Zhao; Meiqing Yang; Jing Chen; Xianpeng Zhang; Le Tao; Yilan Liu; Xiufeng Huang; Chuan-Chao Wang

doi:10.3389/fgene.2021.735084

Genomic Insight Into the Population Structure and Admixture History of Tai-Kadai-Speaking Sui People in Southwest China

Front Genet. 2021 Sep 20:12:735084. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.735084. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Xiaoyun Bin¹, Rui Wang^{2

3

4}, Youyi Huang¹, Rongyao Wei¹, Kongyang Zhu^{2

3

4}, Xiaomin Yang^{2

3

4}, Hao Ma^{2

3

4}, Guanglin He^{2

3

4}, Jianxin Guo^{2

3

4}, Jing Zhao^{2

3

4}, Meiqing Yang⁵, Jing Chen⁵, Xianpeng Zhang⁶, Le Tao^{2

3

4}, Yilan Liu^{2

3

4}, Xiufeng Huang¹, Chuan-Chao Wang^{2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ College of Basic Medical Sciences, Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities, Baise, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Biology, School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
³ Department of Anthropology and Ethnology, Institute of Anthropology, School of Sociology and Anthropology, National Institute for Data Science in Health and Medicine, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
⁵ Department of Forensic Medicine, Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang, China.
⁶ Jinzhou Medical University, Jinzhou, China.

Abstract

Sui people, which belong to the Tai-Kadai-speaking family, remain poorly characterized due to a lack of genome-wide data. To infer the fine-scale population genetic structure and putative genetic sources of the Sui people, we genotyped 498,655 genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using SNP arrays in 68 Sui individuals from seven indigenous populations in Guizhou province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in Southwest China and co-analyzed with available East Asians via a series of population genetic methods including principal component analysis (PCA), ADMIXTURE, pairwise Fst genetic distance, f-statistics, qpWave, and qpAdm. Our results revealed that Guangxi and Guizhou Sui people showed a strong genetic affinity with populations from southern China and Southeast Asia, especially Tai-Kadai- and Hmong-Mien-speaking populations as well as ancient Iron Age Taiwan Hanben, Gongguan individuals supporting the hypothesis that Sui people came from southern China originally. The indigenous Tai-Kadai-related ancestry (represented by Li), Northern East Asian-related ancestry, and Hmong-Mien-related lineage contributed to the formation processes of the Sui people. We identified the genetic substructure within Sui groups: Guizhou Sui people were relatively homogeneous and possessed similar genetic profiles with neighboring Tai-Kadai-related populations, such as Maonan. While Sui people in Yizhou and Huanjiang of Guangxi might receive unique, additional gene flow from Hmong-Mien-speaking populations and Northern East Asians, respectively, after the divergence within other Sui populations. Sui people could be modeled as the admixture of ancient Yellow River Basin farmer-related ancestry (36.2-54.7%) and ancient coastal Southeast Asian-related ancestry (45.3-63.8%). We also identified the potential positive selection signals related to the disease susceptibility in Sui people via integrated haplotype score (iHS) and number of segregating sites by length (nSL) scores. These genomic findings provided new insights into the demographic history of Tai-Kadai-speaking Sui people and their interaction with neighboring populations in Southern China.

Keywords: East Asia; Tai-Kadai-speaking Sui people; genetic admixture; genetic substructure; population history.