Local ancestry inference identifies robust evidence of selection in Neolithic Europe.

Local ancestry inference reveals strong evidence of selection at FADS1/2 in Neolithic Europe, with consistent signals across multiple datasets and methods.

• Why it matters: Understanding how admixture shaped genetic adaptation in ancient populations is crucial for insights into human evolution, but current methods are less validated for ancient DNA with its unique challenges.
• What they did: The study benchmarked eight local ancestry inference methods on 176 imputed Neolithic genomes, comparing their estimates and assessing their ability to detect selection signals, focusing on key loci like FADS1/2 and IRAK4.
• The result: Findings show that while ancestry estimates are correlated, method choice significantly impacts inferred patterns and signals of selection, emphasizing the need for multi-method validation to reliably identify adaptive loci in ancient genomes.