293 Whole Genomes Trace the Population History and Evolutionary Dynamics of Tibeto-Burman Groups on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau

A team led by Meng Gexin sequenced the whole genomes of 293 individuals from 21 Tibeto-Burman-speaking populations on the eastern Tibetan Plateau—particularly the Zang-Yi Corridor—and genotyped a further 799 individuals from 60 Sino-Tibetan-speaking populations, reporting the work in Molecular Biology and Evolution.

The Zang-Yi and Hexi corridors are key human arteries linking the Tibetan Plateau, the Central Plains, and Central Asia, through which many groups moved over history. Yet sparse sampling had left the fine internal genetic structure of Tibeto-Burman groups and their relationships to neighbors without systematic genomic evidence.

The large dataset reveals previously underappreciated fine substructure and widespread admixture across the Zang-Yi and Hexi corridors, and reconstructs the origins and migrations of the region’s Tibeto-Burman populations, providing a genetic framework for how languages, people, and culture diffused together along these routes.

The authors argue the results offer the most systematic genomic evidence to date for the genetic structure, linguistic diffusion, and evolutionary dynamics of populations on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, grounding the formation of the Sino-Tibetan language family within concrete geographic corridors and networks of human interaction.