An archaic reference-free method to jointly infer Neanderthal and Denisovan introgressed segments in modern human genomes

Abstract

Admixture between populations is a common feature of human history. Admixture events introduce new genetic variation that can fuel evolution. Characterizing the significance of admixture events on the evolution of populations across various species is of great interest to evolutionary geneticists. Local Ancestry Inference (LAI) methods infer genetic ancestry of an individual at a particular chromosomal location. Certain methods specialize in detecting archaic introgression, which consists of interbreeding between modern and archaic humans like Neanderthals and Denisovans. Most current LAI methods allow the detection of a single archaic ancestry, and post-processing may distinguish between multiple waves of introgression. These methods vary in how they choose archaic or modern reference genomes for the inference. Here, we present a new HMM-based method (DAIseg), which has the advantage of simultaneously distinguishing between multiple waves of ancient and recent admixture, using only modern human reference genomes. Simulations demonstrate that DAIseg achieves higher overall performance than state-of-the-art methods. We also apply DAIseg to Papuan populations to jointly detect Denisovan and Neanderthal introgressed segments, and identify a higher number of archaic segments than previous methods. Analysis of inferred introgressed segments, shows that we can identify evidence for two Denisovan introgression events in Papuans. Overall, on top of being able to deal with both Archaic and recent admixture, DAIseg provides a more principled approach for detecting and classifying Denisovan and Neanderthal segments which will improve downstream analysis of introgressed segments to infer the impact of archaic introgression in humans.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2026 · DOI ↗