An international team lead by Prof Cristian Capelli, Tutorial Fellow for Human Sciences, has characterised the genetic variation present in the Italian population.
Results showed that ancient and historical mixing of populations from Europe and nearby regions played a key role in shaping the genetic diversity observed in Italy, affecting also the amount of Neanderthal DNA present across Italy and Europe, and highlighted the presence of a novel ancient component in the genomes of the Italians, particularly in the South of the peninsula.
The article “Population structure of modern-day Italians reveals patterns of ancient and archaic ancestries in Southern Europe” has been published in Science Advances.
Further information on the research can be found here.
