In search of Viking origins: tackling the big WHEN and WHERE questions.

Eran Elhaik

Abstract

Procuring historical biodiversity and disease-associated genetic variation is the Holy Grail of both population and medical geneticists. It is central to understanding how modern populations are structured and why they vary in disease susceptibility and facilitating the development of population-specific interventions. Ancient DNA (aDNA) has enormous potential to inform genetic and medical practices, but first, it is essential to answer two fundamental questions: WHEN and WHERE are they from? The gold standard to address the WHEN question is dating skeletons using radiocarbon dating (RD). However, half of all published ancient human genomes lack RD. The WHERE question is typically ignored by equating the burial site with the site of origin. These limitations leave the potential of aDNA largely unfulfilled. Here, I will present our AI-based solutions for answering WHEN and WHER and how they can be used to reconstruct the origins of Scandinavian Vikings, and how they can be used in medical studies.

Bio

Eran Elhaik is a computational geneticist and an Associate Professor of bioinformatics at Lund University in Sweden. His research uses statistical, epidemiological, and mathematical approaches to complex disorders, population genetics, personalized medicine, molecular evolution, microbiome, genomics, paleogenomics, and epigenetics. In his most recent publications, he applied machine learning tools to identify genes involved in complex disorders and address questions of human migration and origins.

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