Haldane’s Sieve has now been operating for a little over a month, and we’ve enjoyed reading the steadily growing stream of interesting manuscripts posted to preprint servers. In this post, we revisit the most viewed preprints since the site began. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are all papers that the authors described to the community with “Our paper” posts:
- The genetic prehistory of southern Africa. Pickrell et al. document genetic structure among the hunter-gatherer populations in southern Africa and demonstrate a genetic link between southern and eastern Africa. Their “Our paper” post is here.
- Population genomics of the Wolbachia endosymbiont in Drosophila melanogaster. Richardson et al. examine the population history and genetic diversity of a fly endosymbiont by clever use of shotgun sequences of fly genomes. An “Our paper” post on this preprint is here.
- The date of interbreeding between Neandertals and modern humans. Sankararaman et al. show that Neandertal-related genetic material entered the modern human population 30-80kya. The authors’ “Our paper” post is here, and Graham Coop discusses some of the conclusions here.
- A genetic variant near olfactory receptor genes influences cilantro preference. Eriksson et al. identify a genetic variant that influences whether or not people like the taste of cilantro. An “Our paper” post is here.
- Blood ties: ABO is a trans-species polymorphism in primates. Segurel et al. show that the polymorphisms underlying the ABO blood group in humans have been maintained by balancing selection for tens of millions of years. An “Our paper” post is here.