About the Authors

Marc Haber

Affiliations The Lebanese American University, Chouran, Beirut, Lebanon, Evolutionary Biology Institute, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

Daniel E. Platt

Affiliation Bioinformatics and Pattern Discovery, IBM T. J. Watson Research Centre, Yorktown Heights, New York, United States of America

Maziar Ashrafian Bonab

Affiliation Biological Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Sonia C. Youhanna

Affiliation The Lebanese American University, Chouran, Beirut, Lebanon

David F. Soria-Hernanz

Affiliations Evolutionary Biology Institute, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain, The Genographic Project, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., United States of America

Begoña Martínez-Cruz

Affiliation Evolutionary Biology Institute, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

Bouchra Douaihy

Affiliation The Lebanese American University, Chouran, Beirut, Lebanon

Michella Ghassibe-Sabbagh

Affiliation The Lebanese American University, Chouran, Beirut, Lebanon

Hoshang Rafatpanah

Affiliation Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Mohsen Ghanbari

Affiliation Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

John Whale

Affiliation Biological Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Oleg Balanovsky

Affiliation Research Centre for Medical Genetics, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, Russia

R. Spencer Wells

Affiliation The Genographic Project, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., United States of America

David Comas

Affiliation Evolutionary Biology Institute, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

Chris Tyler-Smith

Affiliation Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom

Pierre A. Zalloua

pierre.zalloua@lau.edu.lb

Affiliations The Lebanese American University, Chouran, Beirut, Lebanon, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

The Genographic Consortium

Membership of the Genographic Consortium is provided in the Acknowledgments.

Competing Interests

Daniel E Platt is an employee if IBM. With regard to the Genographic Consortium: Janet Ziegle is employed by Applied Biosystems, and Pandihumar Swamikrishnan, Asif Javed, Laximi Parida and Ajay K. Royyuru are employed by IBM. There are no patents or products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MH DP PZ. Performed the experiments: MH SY BD MGS. Analyzed the data: MH DP MAB DSH BMC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MAB HR MG OB JW. Wrote the paper: MH PZ. Revised the manuscript: RSW DC CTS.