Analyses of genetic data within an interdisciplinary framework to investigate recent human evolutionary history and complex disease
ABSTRACT: In this dissertation, I have integrated diverse interdisciplinary data with two aims: 1) to explore both evolutionary history in Eastern Africa and Yemen, and 2) to investigate health disparities in the complex disease of hypertension. In the first study, I generated mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and analyzed it in combination with historical and linguistic data to test various population histories in Yemenite and Ethiopian Jewish populations. I discovered that Yemenite Jewish mtDNA diversity reflects potential descent from ancient Israeli exiles as well as evidence of African and Middle Eastern ancestry, with little evidence for large-scale conversion of local Yemeni, while the mtDNA of the Ethiopian Jewish population suggests descent primarily through conversion of local Ethiopian women. In the second study, I analyzed a large dataset of mtDNA from Yemen alongside comparative samples from Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and India to gain insight into migrations of modern humans out of Africa and settlement patterns throughout Yemen. In the third study, I integrated ethnographic, biological, and genetic data on a southeastern Puerto Rican population to explore biological and cultural contributors to hypertension
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2010
University of Florida, [Gainesville, Fla.], 2010