Genome-wide scans demonstrate that genetic variantsassociated with high-altitude adaptation in Tibetansand Andeans arose independently as a result ofconvergent adaptation. There is widespread interest in the identification ofhuman genes subject to positive selection, in part becausethey may elucidate the biological basis of humanadaptation to novel environments and, therefore, maylead to the identification of genes and variants that play arole in disease susceptibility. To this end, a number ofcomputational approaches have been developed toperform scans for positive selection. Unlike demographicprocesses such as migration, population expansion andbottlenecks, which affect whole-genome patterns ofvariation, positive selection shapes variation in a locusspecificmanner.
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