Qiaomei Fu
Biography
Qiaomei Fu, Deputy Director and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. By developing innovative key paleogenomic technologies, she has enabled large-scale ancient DNA analyses and obtained the highest-quality Pleistocene proteins worldwide to date. She has led research on the interaction and environmental adaptation of modern and ancient humans in East Asia, achieving groundbreaking progress in the study of East Asian population evolution. By reconstructing the population evolutionary map of East Asia over the past 400,000 years, her innovative research has revealed new insights into human evolution, migration, and adaptation during the Quaternary period.
To date, she has published over 120 academic papers and books (including 18 as first or corresponding author in Nature, Science, and Cell). Her achievements have been recognized in "China's Top 10 Scientific Advances," "Nature's Top 10 Scientific Events", "Cell's Best Paper of the Year," and"2025 Breakthrough of the Year. She has received numerous honors, including the Nicholas Shackleton Medal for Outstanding Young Quaternary Scientists, the XPLORER Prize, the UNESCO-AI Fozan International Prize for the Promotion of Young Scientists in STEM, and "The TWAS-CAS Young Scientists Award".
Abstract
400,000 Years of East Asian Population History through Ancient Molecules
Human origins and evolution are central to the Earth and Life Sciences. Ancient DNA and ancient proteins serve as molecular archives with precise temporal information, enabling direct tracking of genetic diversity, population relationships, and evolutionary changes. A series of in-house technological breakthroughs-including ancient nuclear DNA capture, ancient protein extraction and automated protein identification pipelines, and an acid-etching microsampling method-have greatly expanded the spatiotemporal reach of paleomolecular research.
To date, we have generated over 900 nuclear genomes and nine proteomes spanning the past 400,000 years in East Asia, enabling the systematic reconstruction of the region's dynamic population history. In the Paleolithic, proteomic analyses confirmed that Middle Pleistocene East Asian Homo erectus belonged to one related population, with genetic contributions possibly entering modern humans via Denisovans; the Harbin cranium was identified as an early Denisovan, providing the clearest information on the appearance of this archaic hominin.
Early modern humans include a pre-Last Glacial Maximum lineage that largely disappeared (represented by the Tianyuan and AR33K individuals), while southern East Asia preserved multiple deeply divergent lineages (e.g., Xingyi, Qihe, Central Yunnan ancestry that later contributed, respectively, to modern Tibetan, Austronesian, and Austroasiatic populations. In the Neolithic, we proposed a dual northern-southern ancestry model: present-day East Asians derive from two lineages - ancient northern and southern East Asians - that diverged over 19,000 years ago and have admixed continuously since the early Neolithic. These populations showed strong genetic continuity over millennia with little external replacement-supporting local origins of rice and millet agriculture.
For early civilizations, the Shimao population derived from local late Yangshao residents and interacted with Yumin-related steppe herders and southern rice-farmers: its patrilineal pedigrees and stratified rituals revealed early state organization. Together, these findings redefine East Asian population history and provide an evolutionary framework for understanding the long-term interactions among human populations culture, and the environment. (Key Words: ancient DNA, ancient proteome, archaic hominin, early modern human evolutionary dynamics)
