Detecting runs of homozygosity from low-coverage ancient DNA

We present a novel method to detect runs of homozygosity (ROH) from low-coverage genotype data typical for ancient human DNA. ROH are the genetic signature of matings between closely related parents, and as such, the frequency and length distribution of these blocks can give insight into recent population history and mating patterns. Existing methods identify ROH by scanning for regions that lack heterozygote genotypes, but this strategy frequently fails for ancient individuals: The vast majority of ancient DNA data has low read depth