Inference of population structure and demographic history of indigenous populations from Africa

Dr. Hiba Babiker
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena
 
Africa contains one-third of the world’s languages and its populations have the highest genetic diversity compared to the rest of the world. Focusing on indigenous populations from Africa has the potential to reveal past demographic events and to provide insights into human adaptation and disease susceptibility in Africans and populations of African descent. My talk will explore the genetic variation of Northeast African populations and recent findings from genome-wide analysis of the Dogon populations from West Africa. These findings shed light on the coevolution of languages and genes and highlight the importance of interdisciplinary research in decoding unanswered questions in the human history.