Dienekes & John Hawks have already blogged a new paper, Geographical structure and differential natural selection amongst North European populations:
Population structure can provide novel insight into the human past and recognizing and correcting for such stratification is a practical concern in gene mapping by many association methodologies. We investigate these patterns, primarily through principal component (PC) analysis of whole genome SNP polymorphism, in 2099 individuals from populations of Northern European origin (Ireland, UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Australia and HapMap European-American). The major trends (PC1 and PC2) demonstrate an ability to detect geographic substructure, even over a small area like the British Isles, and this information can then be applied to finely dissect the ancestry of the European-Australian and -American samples. They simultaneously point to the importance of considering population stratification in what might be considered a small homogenous region. There is evidence from FST based analysis of genic ...