Heritability studies across taxonomic groups suggest that both propensity and timing of migration have a genetic component (see Pulido and Berthold 2003 for review), but we have limited insight into the genes and molecular mechanisms involved (Dingle 1991; Liedvogel et al. 2011).
Eccles MR, He S, Ahn A, Slobbe LJ, Jeffs AR, Yoon H-S, et al. MITF and PAX3 play distinct roles in melanoma cell migration; outline of a "Genetic Switch" theory involving MITF and PAX3 in proliferative and invasive phenotypes of melanoma.
In tracing migration events through a genetic tree we can learn much about H5N1's dispersal patterns, including their extent and magnitude.
Therefore, to better understand African migration history from a genetic point of view, we need a much denser geographical sampling.
Another possible explanation would be that even if the ancestral sequences were not beneficial to the species, random sampling contributed to the elimination of other alleles and the fixation of these sequences in the downsized population, creating a new lineage, due to natural catastrophe or population migration, referred to as a "genetic drift" or "population bottleneck" [ 27].
While these earlier migrations "should have left a genetic mark in later periods," Haak says, Treilles might not be the "best candidate" for tracing them.
The female migrations are traced by analyzing a genetic element in every cell called mitochondrial DNA.
At a broader scale, if the differentiation between populations depends on the distance between them, as a result of equilibrium between migration and genetic drift, there is an isolation by distance effect [ 13].
A genetic study examining the migration of dogs to the Americas revealed evidence that dogs did not accompany the first humans to the New World more than 15,000 years ago; the study suggested that dogs came to the Americas only 10,000 years ago.
As developed above, the approaches to infer demographic parameters from genetic data classically rely on neutral models that assume a balance between migration and genetic drift (Whitlock and McCauley 1999).
