In this article, the authors first review a critique of their previous work on the geographic distribution of the ADHIB*47His allele and then report on their more recent work on the ethnicity-associated positive selection on ADHIB*47His in Eastern Asia.
The critique of the authors previous work on the ADHIB*47His allele was in the Letter to the Editor by Borinskaya et al., who provided new data and comments relevant to the current authors’ previous article on the geographic distribution of the ADHIB*47His allele. Borinskaya et al. argued in the Letter to the Editor that some of the previously published data by the current authors were anomalous and probably the result of typing errors. They presented new data to support their critique. The current authors agree with this critique of their previous report, noting that the best way to identify anomalous or erroneous gene-frequency data is to type additional relevant population samples as Borinskaya et al. have done. In the current authors’ recent publication, they reported on the ethnicity-associated positive selection on ADHIB*47His in Eastern Asia. They published its allele frequency for additional populations, such as Uygur, Kazakh, Mongol, Khams, etc. They also note other recent reports of ADHIB*47His-allele frequencies for more population samples. In total, the current authors have assembled data on 98 more population samples (72 from the literature and 26 from their own lab) since their previous publications. The data on the 26 of those samples are present in the current report. These data show that the ADHIB*47His allele frequency decreases significantly from East China to West China. The low-frequency area now extends from Southern Asia to the Tibetan Plateau. 1 table and 7 references (publisher abstract modified)