Largest-ever DNA mapping study of the Philippines

Over 50 millennia, at least five major immigration waves have successively populated the Philippines, the most comprehensive survey of genetic variations in the country to date shows. This Uppsala University study, published in the scientific journal PNAS, comprises 2.3 million DNA markers from some 1,000 individuals.

Our findings suggest that instead of farming, climate change may have played a more important role in driving the mass movement of populations in various directions," says Maximilian Larena, researcher at Uppsala University's Department of Organismal Biology and first author of the study.

The Philippines' more than 7,000 islands have always been a link between Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Polynesian islands of the Pacific Ocean. For millennia, the archipelago has served as a corridor for migration from one continent to another.

In a new study, a group of researchers from Australia, Taiwan, the Philippines and elsewhere, led by Uppsala University, reveal the huge scale and complexity of the Filipino population's origins, kinship patterns and genetic diversity. By typing 2.3 million DNA markers that are variable in us humans, and then using computational methods, the scientists have investigated the Filipinos' DNA. In doing so, they analyzed these markers from more than 1,000 individuals, representing 115 Filipino cultural groups.