Giacomo Villani

Interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was strongly sex biased Sex biases in admixture and other demographic processes are recurrent features throughout human evolution. For admixture between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMHs), sex bias has been p...

science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea6774

Excess of Sapiens (S) regions in Neanderthal (N) chromosome X indicate a preference in ♂N - ♀S in their ancient admixture. Beatiful paper. This would also explain, a lot, the S mtDNA substitution of original N mtDNA in Neanderthal (my personal consideration).

Sicily: from fifteen millennia ago to present | Giacomo Villani The history of the Italian island is unveiled by researchers as a mosaic shaped by prehistorical and historical contacts in the Mediterranean Sea

Four months ago, I published my first #ancientDNA paper about #Sicily. I really want everyone to understand what we discovered, so I also made this divulgative article to explain our main findings: g-villani.github.io/giacomovilla...
Feel free to check! 😊

What a week! 🎉 Big thanks to @isba11.bsky.social for hosting an incredible ISBA conference — so well organized and full of great science.

Fifteen millennia of human mitogenome evolution in Sicily Mitogenomes spanning 15 millennia reveal a genetic discontinuity within Sicily and continuous gene flow from Eurasia and Africa.

I'm thrilled to announce, together with @RajivBoscoloAgostini and @jack-the-villain.bsky.social, that our paper entitled "Fifteen millennia of human mitogenome evolution in Sicily" is out now in Science Advances!

Check it out!
doi.org/10.1126/scia...

Group photo from the EMBO Population Genomics Course in Naples, 2025

After a week of intense population genomics, lots of tired but still smiley faces. Thank you @embo.org for funding another edition of our Population Genomics course in Naples. And thank you to the trainers and participants for making this eight edition another success! #EMBOpopgen