Genomes of Modern Japanese People Analyzed

YAKOHAMA, JAPAN—A new genetic study conducted by Xiaoxi Liu of the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences and his colleagues suggests that modern Japanese people are mostly descended from three ancestral groups, according to a Live Science report. Those three groups include Jomon hunter-gatherers; a group thought to be the predecessors of the Han people of China; and an unidentified group with ties to Northeast Asia. It had been previously thought that the Japanese were descended from the Jomon and Yayoi farmers who migrated to the islands of Japan from continental Asia. The new study also identified 42 pieces of DNA in the population of Japan that were inherited from Neanderthals and two from Denisovans. Most of this DNA is unique to East Asians, the researchers explained. Some of this DNA has been associated with the development of type 2 diabetes; height; coronary artery disease; prostate cancer; and rheumatoid arthritis. The genetic data and relevant clinical information collected from the study’s 3,200 participants have been entered into a new database dubbed the Japanese Encyclopedia of Whole-Genome/Exome Sequencing Library, or JEWEL. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. For more, go to "Japan's Genetic History."