SMIA: a simple way for inference of admixed population ancestors

Abstract

As a result of the migration of ancestral populations and mating between them, most new humans are admixed. Ancestry estimates may be important in pharmacogenetics, complex diseases, and anthropological processes. Many methods and tools have been proposed for the ancestry inference. Most of these methods are complex and require biological and statistical parameters. In this paper, we introduce a simple method to inference of ancestry (SMIA) using the Euclidean distance between the haplotype of admixed individual and ancestral populations. Proposed SMIA used does not require many parameters. The only input parameter in SMIA is the window length. The simulation results show that in windows with a length of 1600-3000 SNPs, SMIA can detect the correct ancestry of the admixed individual with an accuracy of more than 90%.