Why this topic Ancient DNA sequencing has gone from a handful of skeletons a decade ago to thousands today, and new statistical methods can now track an allele's frequency rising or falling generation by generation instead of only comparing populations as they exist now. The loci it keeps returning to are largely the same six or seven names population genetics has pointed to for twenty years.
From our blog
What this topic connects to
Nothing here yet. None of the variants we publish shares a paper with this topic so far. That is a statement about our catalogue, not about the research — and it is why this page has no list rather than a made-up one.
How this was counted
Europe PMC, title and abstract only, searched for “natural selection”, “positive selection”, “selective sweep”, “genetic adaptation” alongside each published rsID. Full text was not counted: it returns every paper with an rsID buried in a supplementary table. Recounted monthly.
Quoting this page
Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0: free to read, share and adapt for non-commercial use, naming MyGeneLog™ and linking the exact page. Commercial use, including training or serving a commercial AI system, needs a licence — https://www.mygenelog.com/license
Natural selection. MyGeneLog™. https://www.mygenelog.com/topics/natural-selection
Questions about Natural selection
What is Natural selection?
Natural selection is this site's topic page for variants where population geneticists have measured selection acting directly on the locus, not just an association with a trait — the rare part of human genetics where the story is evolutionary rather than clinical.
Do all the variants on this page affect disease risk?
No — most were favored for a completely different reason (digesting milk, tolerating alcohol, resisting malaria, hair thickness), and several carry no disease risk at all. What they share is a documented signature of selection, not a shared health effect.
Why is natural selection a topic on this site now?
Ancient DNA sequencing and new statistical methods have turned selection detection from comparing populations as they exist today into directly reconstructing how an allele's frequency changed generation by generation — and the loci it keeps returning to are largely the same six or seven names population genetics has pointed to for twenty years.
What are the "confirmed" variants on the natural selection topic page?
They are not co-mentions like the rest of the list. Each is backed by its own dedicated population-genetics study demonstrating selection at that exact locus, separate from whichever paper first described what the variant does.