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Contemporary Jews comprise an aggregate of ethno-religious communities whose worldwide members identify with each other through various shared religious, historical and cultural traditions. Historical evidence suggests common origins in the Middle East, followed by migrations leading to the establishment of communities of Jews in Europe, Africa and Asia, in what is termed the Jewish Diaspora. This complex demographic history imposes special challenges in attempting to address the genetic structure of the Jewish people. Although many genetic studies have shed light on Jewish origins and on diseases prevalent among Jewish communities, including studies focusing on uniparentally and biparentally inherited markers, genome-wide patterns of variation across the vast geographic span of Jewish Diaspora communities and their respective neighbours have yet to be addressed. Here we use high-density bead arrays to genotype individuals from 14 Jewish Diaspora communities and compare these patterns of genome-wide diversity with those from 69 Old World non-Jewish populations, of which 25 have not previously been reported. These samples were carefully chosen to provide comprehensive comparisons between Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the Diaspora, as well as with non-Jewish populations from the Middle East and north Africa. Principal component and structure-like analyses identify previously unrecognized genetic substructure within the Middle East. Most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired Diaspora host populations. In contrast, Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and Indian Jews (Bene Israel and Cochini) cluster with neighbouring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively, despite a clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant. These results cast light on the variegated genetic architecture of the Middle East, and trace the origins of most Jewish Diaspora communities to the Levant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arabian Peninsula (AP) was an important crossroad between Africa, Asia, and Europe, being the cradle of the structure defining these main human population groups, and a continuing path for their admixture. The screening of 741,000 variants in 420 Arabians and 80 Iranians allowed us to quantify the dominant sub-Saharan African admixture in the west of the peninsula, whereas South Asian and Levantine/European influence was stronger in the east, leading to a rift between western and eastern sides of the Peninsula. Dating of the admixture events indicated that Indian Ocean slave trade and Islamization periods were important moments in the genetic makeup of the region. The western-eastern axis was also observable in terms of positive selection of diversity conferring lactose tolerance, with the West AP developing local adaptation and the East AP acquiring the derived allele selected in European populations and existing in South Asia. African selected malaria resistance through the DARC gene was enriched in all Arabian genomes, especially in the western part. Clear European influences associated with skin and eye color were equally frequent across the Peninsula., (© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)