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.)

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

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