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Capturing the Genetic Diversity of the Himba Population

The Himba people are a semi-nomadic, Bantu-speaking pastoralist group from the northwestern Kunene region of Namibia. Because of their limited population size, restricted geographic distribution, and endogamy, founder populations represent an ideal system for genetic analyses due to reduction of the confounding environmental and cultural variables. The original study used genotype data and demographic interview data to understand family dynamics and ancestry in a population of Himba pastoralists. This combination of data will be used to understand the impact of social processes like paternity, cousin marriage and the choice of romantic partners. The genotype data, available through dbGaP, are relevant to broader studies of ancestry, allele frequencies and the relationship of Himba to other ethnic groups in sub-Saharan Africa.

In particular, the Himba population provides a unique opportunity to study questions regarding extra-pair paternity because Himba culture allows both men and women, married and not, to take multiple partners. Previous estimates of extra-pair paternity rates in human populations have been very low, but these estimates lack global and cultural diversity in population representation. Thus, investigating the rate of extra-pair paternity in the Himba will greatly aid in understanding the global variation in non-paternity rates among human populations. Saliva samples were collected from parents and children, and were genotyped on Illumina SNP array platforms (MEGAex and H3Africa). In total, 678 individuals are deposited. Paternity results were de-identified and protected by a double blind protocol (no researcher has full knowledge of individual paternity results). Due to the sensitive nature of this study, paternity assertions are not available for access.

For a subset of 51 of these individuals methylation array data was generated from the saliva-derived DNA and available through dbGaP. These data were generated in order to investigate the accuracy of epigenetic age predictors in this population and to construct population-specific epigenetic age predictors in a subsequent publication. Chronological ages are available for these 51 individuals.