A general maximum likelihood estimation program.

Resource selection by animals

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/165/3895/762.full.pdf

Caucasian Genes in American Negroes

To the extent that a key issue can ever be identified in biology, understanding the significance of the large amount of genetic variation encountered in all properly studied outbreeding plant and animal species is the key issue in population genetics today. A meaningful discussion of this issue is seriously hampered by lack of data on the breeding structure of natural populations. Human populations offer unusual advantages for the study of population structure. Ancestry and recent patterns of migration of individuals and groups can be determined with a precision not possible for other 'wild' populations, as can individual reproductive performances. History and archaeology supply additional data on population movements in the past also usually not available for other types of organisms. While data on all types of human populations are greatly to be desired, data on the surviving relatively unacculturated, tribal-type populations are especially critical. The parameters of these populations come closest to reflecting the circumstances under which human evolution occurred and under which the vast amount of variability now known to be present in human populations arose. Such populations will not long be available for study. Guided by these and other considerations, in 1961 we initiated a major programme directed

/pdf/the-genetic-structure-of-a-tribal-population-the-yanomama-53383yzy85.pdf

The genetic structure of a tribal population, the Yanomama Indians

A genetic and epidemiological survey of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) was conducted among the Mexican Americans residing in three socioeconomically distinct areas of San Antonio, Texas: a low socioeconomic (SES) traditional area (barrio), a middle SES, ethnically balanced area (transitional), and a high SES, predominantly Anglo area (suburb). Seventeen polymorphic markers were used to relate the prevalences of NIDDM with the extent of Amerindian ancestry of 1,237 Mexican Americans of these three residential areas. While only the RH and haptoglobin loci showed evidence of association with NIDDM, an admixture analysis of the combined allele frequency data revealed a pattern of decreasing NIDDM prevalence with increasing socioeconomic status (as approximated by neighborhood of residence) and a parallel decrease in Amerindian ancestry. The rank-order correlation between NIDDM prevalence and Amerindian admixture is 0.943 (P less than .001) for the crude prevalence rate and 0.829 (P less than .02) for the age-adjusted rate. Nested gene diversity analysis revealed that the heterogeneity of allele frequencies is more pronounced when individuals were classified by their NIDDM disease status as compared to the classification by neighborhood. Estimation of Amerindian ancestry of each individual did not reveal any significant change in the shape of the distributions of individual admixture proportions in diabetics as compared to the controls. Nevertheless, the results suggest that genetic factors partially explain the differences in NIDDM prevalence observed between the Mexican American and Anglo populations in the southwestern United States.

Relationship of prevalence of non‐insulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus to Amerindian admixture in the Mexican Americans of San Antonio, Texas

A method for estimating the general rate of nonpaternity in a population was validated using phenotype data on seven blood groups (A1A2BO, MNSs, Rh, Duffy, Lutheran, Kidd, and P) on 396 mother, child, and legal father trios from Nuevo Leon, Mexico. In all, 32 legal fathers were excluded as the possible father based on genetic exclusions at one or more loci (combined average exclusion probability of 0.694 for specific mother-child phenotype pairs). The maximum likelihood estimate of the general nonpaternity rate in the population was 0.118 +/- 0.020. The nonpaternity rates in Nuevo Leon were also seen to be inversely related with the socioeconomic status of the families, i.e., the highest in the low and the lowest in the high socioeconomic class. We further argue that with the moderately low (69.4%) power of exclusion for these seven blood group systems, the traditional critical values of paternity index (PI > or = 19) were not good indicators of true paternity, since a considerable fraction (307/364) of nonexcluded legal fathers had a paternity index below 19 based on the seven markers. Implications of these results in the context of genetic-epidemiological studies as well as for detection of true fathers for child-support adjudications are discussed, implying the need to employ a battery of genetic markers (possibly DNA-based tests) that yield a higher power of exclusion. We conclude that even though DNA markers are more informative, the probabilistic approach developed here would still be needed to estimate the true rate of nonpaternity in a population or to evaluate the precision of detecting true fathers.

A general maximum likelihood estimation program.

Citations

Resource selection by animals

Caucasian Genes in American Negroes

The genetic structure of a tribal population, the Yanomama Indians

Relationship of prevalence of non‐insulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus to Amerindian admixture in the Mexican Americans of San Antonio, Texas

Estimation of nonpaternity in the Mexican population of Nuevo Leon: a validation study with blood group markers.

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