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SFI External Professor Andreas Wagner is among co-authors of a paper that explores use of the concept of genotype networks in studies of human population genetics.

"Learning how the genotype space of each region of our genome has been explored during the evolutionary history of the human species can lead to a better understanding on how selective pressures and neutral factors have shaped genetic diversity within populations and among individuals," write the authors.

Combined with the availability of larger datasets of sequencing data, genotype networks represent a new approach to the study of human genetic diversity that looks to the whole genome, and goes beyond the classical division between selection and neutrality methods, they say.

Read the paper in PLOS ONE (June 9, 2014)