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. 2011 Jan 31;6(1):e16338.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016338.

Ancestry of the Iban is predominantly Southeast Asian: genetic evidence from autosomal, mitochondrial, and Y chromosomes

Tatum S Simonson  1 , Jinchuan Xing, Robert Barrett, Edward Jerah, Peter Loa, Yuhua Zhang, W Scott Watkins, David J Witherspoon, Chad D Huff, Scott Woodward, Bryan Mowry, Lynn B Jorde
Affiliations

Ancestry of the Iban is predominantly Southeast Asian: genetic evidence from autosomal, mitochondrial, and Y chromosomes

Tatum S Simonson et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Humans reached present-day Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) in one of the first major human migrations out of Africa. Population movements in the millennia following this initial settlement are thought to have greatly influenced the genetic makeup of current inhabitants, yet the extent attributed to different events is not clear. Recent studies suggest that south-to-north gene flow largely influenced present-day patterns of genetic variation in Southeast Asian populations and that late Pleistocene and early Holocene migrations from Southeast Asia are responsible for a substantial proportion of ISEA ancestry. Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that the ancestors of present-day inhabitants came mainly from north-to-south migrations from Taiwan and throughout ISEA approximately 4,000 years ago. We report a large-scale genetic analysis of human variation in the Iban population from the Malaysian state of Sarawak in northwestern Borneo, located in the center of ISEA. Genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers analyzed here suggest that the Iban exhibit greatest genetic similarity to Indonesian and mainland Southeast Asian populations. The most common non-recombining Y (NRY) and mitochondrial (mt) DNA haplogroups present in the Iban are associated with populations of Southeast Asia. We conclude that migrations from Southeast Asia made a large contribution to Iban ancestry, although evidence of potential gene flow from Taiwan is also seen in uniparentally inherited marker data.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Map of ISEA and generalized migration patterns.
All populations examined in this studied are assigned numbers (see Table S1). The arrows are shaded from dark to light according to consecutive migration events: 1) the Southern migration route along the Sundaland land bridge, 2) mainland Southeast Asia migrations and south-to-north migrations from Indonesia, and 3) the Neolithic gene flow from Taiwan into present-day ISEA.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Principal Components Analysis based on genome-wide SNP genetic distances.
All subpopulations are categorized into ten group as listed in Table S1. PCA coordinates for each subpopulation are provided in Table 2.
Figure 3
Figure 3. NRY chromosome haplogroup frequencies in the Iban in relation to other Asian populations.
Figure 4
Figure 4. MtDNA haplogroup frequencies in the Iban in relation to other Asian populations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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