Analyzing the North African cluster

Continuing with  the Intra-African genome-wide analysis, I wanted to further explore the 'North African' Cluster that appeared to be wide spread from East to North and West Africa, 408 individuals out of the 1065 total samples carried the North African cluster at a frequency greater than 5%. With some of these populations showing a relatively high Standard deviation (Normalized with N-1) for that particular cluster. 

The table below shows the Standard Deviation for each of the 10 clusters found in the Intra-African Genome-Wide Analysis.

Yellow; Moderate Standard Deviation, 5-10%

Green; High Standard Deviation, 10-20%

Red; Very High Standard Deviation, >20%

 

The North African cluster had a high standard deviation in the Sahara-OCC, Morrocans, SAN, Mozabite and Morroco-S populations. All of these populations however, excluding the SAN, carried the North African cluster, on Median, in very high proportions (> 69%), while the SAN had it on Median only at ~4%. 18 out of the 36 SAN samples did however carry the North African cluster anywhere between 5-56%. Therefore, I excluded these 18 samples from the 408 individuals who carried the North African cluster at greater than 5% and proceeded to create a Dataset with PLINK.

The North African Cluster Dataset thus included 390 individuals (plus a few private samples) typed at 26,129 SNPs (all other specifications held constant with the previous Dataset).

  

MDS Analysis

Here below are the MDS plots for the Dataset, the plots include a 3 Dimensional plot, C1 Vs. C2 plot and C1 vs. C3 Plot respectively.

 

The 1^St component separates North Africans from the rest, with Ethiopians and Fulanis located at an intermediate position in this separation. The  2^nd component separates West Africans from the rest, with Bantus (Kenya and South Africa) located at an intermediate position in this separation. The Last and 3^rd component separates the Sandawe from everybody else.

Model Based Analysis.

5 clusters were generated from this dataset using ADMIXTURE, K=5, Unsupervised. A cluster that peaked in the Fulani, one cluster that peaked in the Mozabites, another cluster that peaked in the Sandawe, a fourth cluster that peaked in the Maasai, which I named East African, and a Last cluster that peaked in the Egyptians, which I named North East African, were observed. A PCA for the Fst distances that were generated by ADMIXTURE for these clusters can be seen below.

  

The largest vectorized Fst distance is seen for the Fulani, both for components 1&2, while the East African and Sandawe clusters appear to be close, similar to how the Mozabite and North East African clusters are close.

A standard deviation table (Normalized with N-1) for the 5 clusters generated can be seen below.

The Highest Average Standard Deviation across populations for the five clusters was among the Southern Morrocans and Mozabites (10.61 and 11.7% respectively).

Above are the Median proportions for all five clusters in the dataset.

The Mozabite cluster tapers off in a direction going east from the Northwest of Africa, where it is found at moderate frequencies in Egypt (~10%), the same can be said of the Fulani cluster, i.e tapering off in an eastward direction from Western Africa and found at a moderate (~6%) frequency in the Sandawe. The Sandawe cluster seems to be restricted to East Africa, although relatively high frequencies of it can also be seen in Southern Africa. The East African cluster, which peaks in the Maasai, is observed throughout East, West and Southern Africa. Finally, the North East African cluster merges North Africa with East Africa, for which a major portion can be accounted for with bi-directional Nile Corridor migrations, in addition to populations that used to live in the Sahara at a time when the desert was habitable. Minor, but gradiently significant Extra African input in the formation of the Mozabite and North East African clusters can also not be ruled out.