Special Issue

Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s legacy, 100 years after his birth

Manuscript Submission Deadline: June 30, 2024 Submit Now

Guest Editors

Guido Barbujani

Professor of Genetics, Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Ferrara University, via L. Borsari 46, I-44100 Ferrara, Italy
E-Mail | Website
Lounès Chikhi

CNRS, Laboratoire Évolution & Diversité Biologique (EDB UMR 5174), IRD, CNRS, UPS, Université de Toulouse Midi‐Pyrénées, Toulouse, France;
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Population and Conservation Genetics group, Oeiras, 2870-156 Oeiras, Portugal
E-Mail | Website

Introduction

Luca Cavalli-Sforza was born in Genoa, 25 January 1922, and passed away on 31 August 2018. His contribution to human population and evolutionary genetics just cannot be overestimated. He was the first to realize that the DNA of our cells is a message from the past, transmitted to us by thousands of ancestors, and that by deciphering it we can have access to aspects of our history and prehistory that would be, otherwise, forever unknown. This way, he turned a highly mathematical, specialistic discipline previously focused mainly on the study of recessive diseases into the common scientific ground in which experts of diverse disciplines, such as archaeology and linguistics, palaeontology and demography, would meet and reach synthesis of unprecedented breadth.

Of course, this powerful research programme was not developed by one person alone. Many people contributed their ideas, methods and hard work, and still keep doing it. To put Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s contributions to genetics in the context of ongoing research, Human Population Genetics and Genomics will publish a special issue, with both invited and submitted papers. Each paper will start from one seminal article by Luca Cavalli-Sforza, and review the current state of the art. In particular, these thematic areas, representative of Cavalli-Sforza’s main fields of interest (but not necessarily only them) will be covered:

1. Bacterial genetics

2. Population structure and genetic drift

3. Human adaptation

4. Methods for evolutionary inference

5. Biological vs cultural evolution

6. DNA-based reconstruction of demographic history

7. Human genome diversity.

Keywords

Human genetics; population genetics; human evolution; genetic drift; genome diversity; genetics and culture; population history

Manuscript Submission Information

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor been under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings). All manuscripts will be thoroughly refereed through a single-blinded peer-review process. A guide for manuscript submission is available at Submission Instructions.

Published Papers

Opinion
Interpreting the demic diffusion of early farming in Europe with a three-population model

Kenichi Aoki

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2404040010

Received: May 6, 2024 | Accepted: Oct 2, 2024 | Published: Oct 8, 2024

Review
An anthropologist’s point of view

Jonathan Marks

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2303020003

Received: Dec 25, 2022 | Accepted: Mar 22, 2023 | Published: Apr 12, 2023

Review
Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza and the history of human languages: A linguist’s point of view

Giuseppe Longobardi

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2303010002

Received: Jul 25, 2022 | Accepted: Nov 29, 2022 | Published: Mar 4, 2023

Commentary
Twenty years of the Human Genome Diversity Project

Serena Aneli, Giovanni Birolo, Giuseppe Matullo

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2202040005

Received: Jul 25, 2022 | Accepted: Oct 17, 2022 | Published: Oct 24, 2022

Review
Luca Cavalli-Sforza and phylogenetic evolutionary methods

Joseph Felsenstein

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2202030004

Received: Aug 19, 2021 | Accepted: Feb 11, 2022 | Published: Aug 9, 2022

Review
Prehistoric spread rates and genetic clines

Joaquim Fort

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2202020003

Received: Aug 4, 2021 | Accepted: Nov 26, 2021 | Published: Apr 6, 2022

Review
Genetics and population history. The case of the Iberian Peninsula and the “origin” of Basques

Jaume Bertranpetit

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2202010002

Received: Oct 19, 2021 | Accepted: Nov 30, 2021 | Published: Feb 9, 2022

Review
A genetic history of migration, diversification, and admixture in Asia

Melinda A. Yang

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2202010001

Received: Jun 9, 2021 | Accepted: Sep 14, 2021 | Published: Jan 6, 2022

Review
Neolithic demic diffusion

Guido Barbujani

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2101010005

Received: Apr 7, 2021 | Accepted: Jul 28, 2021 | Published: Oct 16, 2021

Review
Revisiting the demographic history of Central African populations from a genetic perspective

Gwenna Breton, Cesar Fortes-Lima, Carina M. Schlebusch

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2101010004

Received: May 12, 2021 | Accepted: Jul 22, 2021 | Published: Oct 16, 2021

Review
Cultural versus biological inheritance: A retrospective view of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1973)

Hao Shen, Marcus W. Feldman

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2101010003

Received: Apr 16, 2021 | Accepted: Jun 18, 2021 | Published: Oct 16, 2021

Letter to Editor
LUCA, as our father

Matteo Cavalli-Sforza, Francesco Cavalli-Sforza, Luca Tommaso Cavalli-Sforza, Violetta Cavalli-Sforza

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2101010002

Received: Mar 31, 2021 | Accepted: Sep 17, 2021 | Published: Oct 16, 2021

Editorial
Luca Cavalli-Sforza, 100 years after his birth

Lounès Chikhi, Guido Barbujani

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2101010001

Received: Sep 23, 2021 | Accepted: Sep 27, 2021 | Published: Oct 16, 2021