The Fulbe are a pastoral ethnic group living in the Sahelian belt. Their large population size and broad geographic settlement, together with the complexity of their interactions with groups from Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, make them a key population to understand the structure of human genetic variation in Africa. Whereas some aspects of their recent history are known, with documented evidence of their settlement in the Fouta Djallon Highlands (Guinea) during the XI century, their origins remain to be elucidated. Several hypotheses have been proposed, suggesting different African and non-African populations as possible ancestors of Fulbe. The genetic data collected so far did not help to address this question, since different loci lead to conflicting results. To shed new light on the origin and early history of Fulbe, we will analyse 50 high coverage (30×) whole genomes, including 30 Fulbe and 20 non-Fulbe subjects from neighbouring Sahelian groups and northern and eastern Africa. The data will be used to investigate the population structure and admixture events of Fulbe with other African and non-African people. We will reconstruct the ancestry profile of the Fulbe genomes, both at the individual and chromosomal level, taking also into account the data available for ancient African samples. Differently from previous studies which focused on broad areas with few individuals per group or on genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), our proposed research project relies on whole genome sequencing of several individuals from the same ethnic group. By this approach, we expect to obtain important new results about the Fulbe genomic history and their ancient and recent relations with other populations.
