Y chromosomes of 40% Chinese descend from three Neolithic super-grandfathers.

Demographic change of human populations is one of the central questions for delving into the past of human beings. To identify major population expansions related to male lineages, we sequenced 78 East Asian Y chromosomes at 3.9 Mbp of the non-recombining region, discovered >4,000 new SNPs, and identified many new clades.

MtDNA analysis of global populations support that major population expansions began before Neolithic Time.

Agriculture resulted in extensive population growths and human activities. However, whether major human expansions started after Neolithic Time still remained controversial. With the benefit of 1000 Genome Project, we were able to analyze a total of 910 samples from 11 populations in Africa, Europe and Americas.

Major population expansion of East Asians began before neolithic time: evidence of mtDNA genomes.

It is a major question in archaeology and anthropology whether human populations started to grow primarily after the advent of agriculture, i.e., the Neolithic time, especially in East Asia, which was one of the centers of ancient agricultural civilization.

Y-chromosome genotyping and genetic structure of Zhuang populations.

Zhuang, the largest ethnic minority population in China, is one of the descendant groups of the ancient Bai-Yue. Linguistically, Zhuang languages are grouped into northern and southern dialects. To characterize its genetic structure, 13 East Asian-specific Y-chromosome biallelic markers and 7 Y-chromosome short tandem repeat (STR) markers were used to infer the haplogroups of Zhuang populations.