Admixture’s impact on Brazilian population evolution and health

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Admixture’s impact on Brazilian population evolution and health

    Brazil is a vast continental country home to the largest population in Latin America and boasts the world’s largest recently admixed population1 . The colonization process brought approximately 5 million Europeans to Brazil, alongside the forced migration of at least 5 million Africans and the decimation of Indigenous populations, which once included more than 10 million people speaking more than 1000 languages. This distinctive historical interplay shaped a complex mosaic of genetic diversity, underscoring the importance of detailed genomic studies. Nevertheless, similar to other populations in the Global South2 , the Brazilian population remains notably underrepresented in genomic research, where there is a lack of studies investigating the effects of this population’s admixture on its evolution, diversity, and health status.

    To address these gaps, a research group generated 2723 high-coverage whole-genome sequences of the Brazilian population, encompassing urban, rural, and riverine communities from all five geographical regions of Brazil. This dataset reflects a diverse group of ethnic backgrounds, including Afro-Brazilians and descendants of Indigenous people, and provides a comprehensive representation of Brazilian genomic diversity.

(Kelly Nunes et al. www.science.org, 15.05.2025. Adaptado.)

1admixed population: group of individuals formed through interbreeding of two or more previously isolated populations.

2Global South: a group of countries mainly located in the Southern Hemisphere that are often characterized as developing, less developed or underdeveloped.

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