Zhaohui Yang, Caijuan Bai, Youwei Pu, Qinghong Kong, Yongbo Guo, Xuyang Liu, Qi Zhao, Zhichao Qiu, Wangshan Zheng, Yaoxi He, Yihan Lin, Lian Deng, Chao Zhang, Shuhua Xu, Yi Peng, Kun Xiang, Xiaoming Zhang, Chaoying Cui, Yongyue Pan, Jingxue Xin, Yong Wang, Shiming Liu, Liangbang Wang, Hengliang Guo, Zhenzhen Feng, Shaobo Wang, Hong Shi, Binghua Jiang, Tianyi Wu, Xuebin Qi, Bing Su
Strong ultraviolet (UV) radiation at high altitude imposes a serious selective pressure, which may induce skin pigmentation adaptation of indigenous populations. We conducted skin pigmentation phenotyping and genome-wide analysis of Tibetans in order to understand the underlying mechanism of adaptation to UV radiation. We observe that Tibetans have darker baseline skin color compared with lowland Han Chinese, as well as an improved tanning ability, suggesting a two-level adaptation to boost their melanin production...
October 4, 2022: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America