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Kendra Sirak

@ksirak.bsky.social

98 followers 85 following 20 posts

🧬💀🧬Ancient DNA researcher @Harvard. Avid runner, beer aficionado, and plant lady in my other life.


Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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Paper is available for download here: reich.hms.harvard.edu/publications
(12/12)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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A huge thank you to Nada Salem for translating our abstract into Arabic, which helped us share results with people on Soqotra (more of this to come!) (11/n)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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This National Geographic project would not have happened without the amazing men & women on Soqotra who contributed to this collaboration. Thank you to GOAM especially for permitting this study. I’m incredibly proud of the community engagement aspect of this work. (10/n)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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A longstanding question in Soqotri archaeology asks if burial tafoni were segregated by sex? We show that 7/13 tafoni included individuals of both sexes & provide evidence of matrilineal & patrilineal relationships among people buried together. (9/n)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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With ROH, we see a reduced rate of cousin marriages in medieval relative to present-day Soqotra. More research will show if there was a relatively recent shift in marriage practices btwn medieval times and today on Soqotra and perhaps in other parts of the Arab world. (8/n)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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Despite being located off the Horn of Africa, medieval Soqotri have extremely little sub-Saharan African-related ancestry: models of genome-wide data can be fit without this ancestry, while we find evidence of only one L3 mtDNA haplogroup. (7/n)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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However, traders and mariners (from India and elsewhere) rarely moved from coastal areas and plausibly not having much of a genetic impact, which we document in the stability of the Soqotri gene pool over the span of more than a millennium. (6/n)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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This is consistent with the location of Soqotra along Indian Ocean trade routes: Indian inscriptions in Hoq Cave are written in varieties of Brāhmī script and in Sanskrit or vernacularized Sanskrit & the Periplus records India’s provision of female slaves to Soqotra (5/n)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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The medieval Soqotri gene pool is best modeled as deriving ~86% ancestry from people from the Hadramawt, with the remaining ancestry well-proxied by an Iranian related source with up to 2% ancestry from the Indian sub-continent. (4/n)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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We observe this same pattern in only one other group - present-day people from the Hadramawt region of present-day Yemen - which represents a likely source for the peopling of Soqotra. Genetic connections between these regions are extremely strong.(3/n)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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Most modern Arabians can be modeled as deriving all of their Levantine/Anatolian-related ancestry from a Neolithic farmer-related source; however, the medieval Soqotri had relatively more ancestry from ancient groups closer to Natufian hunter-gatherers (2/n).

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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🏺New paper alert! We report #ancientDNA data from 39 people who lived on island of #Soqotra 650-1750CE and provide new evidence that there was not complete population replacement between the Pleistocene and Holocene throughout the Arabian Peninsula (1/n).

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Reposted by Kendra Sirak

Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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🏺New paper tracing genetic changes across the rise/fall of the Roman Empire, showing the genetic impact of people w/Anatolian-, Cent/North European- & Steppe-, and Slavic-related ancestry in the 1st millennium CE. This is a beautiful synthesis of arch + genetic data.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

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Reposted by Kendra Sirak

Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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🏺 I'm excited to see the first paper stemming from the vibrant discussions at #DNAirobi! This work reminds us about the skeletal biology research that forms the foundation for much of our genomic work today, but may not be on the radar of most geneticists 💀🧬🇰🇪

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

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Reposted by Kendra Sirak

Matthew Collins's avatar Matthew Collins @matthewcollins.bsky.social
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Reconstructing the human past: using ancient and modern genomics 17 - 20 Sep 2024 This conference will take place at EMBL Heidelberg, with the option to attend virtually. Registration is not yet open for this event. If you are interested in receiving more information please register your interest.

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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Preprint alert 🧬! We explore population history in the N Eurasian forest/forest-steppe zones spanning the Mesolithic/Neolithic/Bronze Age. Esp interesting is the correlation early Uralic speakers w/expansion of Seima-Turbino metallurgical traditions. (PS: work led by bluesky-less colleagues!)

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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The fact that this amazing resource is open access is nothing short of 👏🙌🤩. Not only a step forward in sharing knowledge, but one that increases equitable access to the resources that are necessary for our field. I'll be reading/sharing with everyone and you should too 🧬

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Reposted by Kendra Sirak

Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒's avatar Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social
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"Which community has been engaged in science awareness? Surely no South African or any African community has been engaged through this act?"

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Reposted by Kendra Sirak

W. Andrew Barr's avatar W. Andrew Barr @wabarr.bsky.social
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Statement from the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists regarding the transport of two hominin fossils aboard the recent 3rd Virgin Galactic commercial space flight.

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Reposted by Kendra Sirak

Wayne Riekhof's avatar Wayne Riekhof @wayneriekhof.bsky.social
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Hey folks, just trying to maximize the number of eyes on this job posting, for which I serve on the search committee. If you work on "genes, genomes, and evolution" writ large, and are on the job market, please apply! Please repost and share widely!

employment.unl.edu/postings/87675

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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Well this explains a lot…I’m not finding Bluesky super intuitive to use, but better than the alternative?

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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Absolutely worth a read 💀🧬

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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#ISBA10 feels like a good time to kick off some activity in this new blue place 💀🧬🦠 I’m excited to share and consume science in this space!

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Reposted by Kendra Sirak

Graham Coop's avatar Graham Coop @gcbias.bsky.social
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Preprint with Raphaël Forien & Harald Ringbauer showing how spatially heterogeneous dispersal can be identified using long shared haplotypes. #popgen
#evolsky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Kendra Sirak's avatar Kendra Sirak @ksirak.bsky.social
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I find that people seem to like PDFs in their inbox the most. I usually distribute and request feedback (if possible) within ~2 weeks. During that time I try to deal with other ms-related things - formatting, improving tables, making figures, adding references, cover letter, etc.

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