Global DNA Project to Study Human Ancestry 325
Steve writes "The National Geographic Society and IBM are teaming up to map the history of human migration using DNA. The Genographic Project aims to collect 100,000 genetic samples which will be used trace the movements of humans out of Africa and around the globe. While the most useful samples will come from indiginous populations, members of the general public will be able to mail in their own DNA on special cheek swabs."
How many years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How many years.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth $100.00? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth $100.00? (Score:1, Insightful)
What's indigenous? (Score:4, Insightful)
At the end of the day, unless you live in central Africa, and possibly not then, no one is truly indegenous. We're all immigrants at some point or another.
OK, I know I'm nitpicking. As far as the spread of mankind etc. then the first arrivals are the indigenous population. Here in the west of Europe peoples have been coming ad going for several thousend years. Exactly who's indigenous is very complex.
Re:Christians are the worst of the religions. (Score:3, Insightful)
This doesn't make sense to me. It seems that if a religion did not claim to be the 'only religion', then why would any of its members cling to it at all? After all, if Christianity was just 'one of many' ways to God, why would people have any incentive to remain Christian? It makes more sense to infer (at least if you believe in a certain religion) that your religion must be the 'only religion', otherwise the central tenets of what 'religion' is fail.
Re:How many years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They could also
Re:Is it worth $100.00? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as "talking with your relatives", you might keep in mind that a lot of people aren't lucky enough to have living ones / know who they are. At any rate, no one is being forced to take this test.
The benefit to society of tracking ancestral DNA is partly from these genealogical projects (who are you to say that orphans don't deserve to know why they have dark skin) and partly in setting up an ancestry-sensitive statistical "baseline" for other research. For a simple example, suppose that you're looking for the genes that cause sickle-cell anemia. If you do this without any ancestral knowledge at all, you're going to get thousands of false positives simply because sickle-cell anemia is correlated to African descent and African-descendants have different genetic frequency EVERYWHERE on the genome. A lot of this genetic variation is non-selective "drift" between population and should be ignored if you're looking for coding (or "metacoding") sequences.
Before projects like this, the only reliable way to compensate for that bias was to do tedious pedigree studies (i.e. find families wherein, up to 2-3 generations back, some members had sickle-cell and some verifiably didn't). Novel statistical methods can take into account the ancestral correlation in ANY samples whatsoever, thus magnifying the power of disease-assays by 1000-fold in some practical cases.
I'd say that that has "value to society" insofar as anything in biotech does. There are also some applications of these ancestry-sensitive approaches in forensics/law (yes, for both the prosecution and the defense - imho, it's a pretty neutral technology which makes for better information in court all around - the dystopian "GATTACA" stuff is still sci-fi).
If you have any further questions, post in reply. I do this stuff for a living, though it's a little hard to explain well in a
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, in our politically correct minds, that sound sexist, but in reality, males have all the genetic information for both genders, they simply only have one copy of the X chromosome. But the statistical information from the male X chromosome should be highly correlated to the female population (every male got his X chromosome from a female, so the statistics in the populations should be highly correlated). But if you only study a male selection, you also have the option studying the Y chromosome ( Y chromosome phylogenetic map [arizona.edu]) . And because the transmission of the Y chromosome is not governed by simple mendalian genetics, it provides an interesting method for phylogenetic reconstruction (much like mitochondrial DNA, which you only get from your mother). With female samples, you can only study the mitocondrial lines.
Is there any reason to believe that genetic statistics are vastly different between men a women? If they are not, would the study be more effective if it only concentrated on men?
(I'm not actually proposing to exclude women, I'm just asking questions)
Adam and Eve never met (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, the nomenclature is mischeivious: Adam and Eve never met. They probably didn't even live within 5 thousand years of eachother. All these studies show are that all existing versions of these genes trace back via a given series of mutations to a specific individual, which, usuing geographic data and some assumptions about migratory behavior and mutation rates, you can imply to have existed in a certain place and time. You can do this with any loci, and at some point in the past it fixes. Each gene goes back to a different individual in a different place. HLA genes go back to the earliest vertibrates.
Don't freak out when you learn the truth about the garden.
Re:Of the Devil (Score:1, Insightful)
How persecuted can you be when an eveangelical Christian is the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
Puh-leez.
Racism and Polygenism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:murrayians aborigines were part erectus? (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, talk of aborigenese being... less human than the rest of humanity is... icky, at best. Google for "Truganini", see the kind of things people have done with the excuse of racial superiority (hint: genocide).
Some say they were part homo erectus.
Yeah, er, we're all part homo erectus... on account of descending from them.
Re:Monotheists are the worsts of the religions. (Score:2, Insightful)
When pesky ideas like God being more powerful than Ceasar, or eternal rewards sprang up after as a result of their conquest of the middle east they did all that they could to contain (in the case of judiasm) or quash (in the case of Chrisitanity) ideas that did not mesh with their own.
Religious conflict is almost always a cultural conflict at its root, that is to say it doesn't matter if the waring parties believe in the same thing, they can still manage to fight about religion (see 30 years war)
As far as christians adopting other practices that is very true (see Christmas/Saturnalia) but becomes more difficult with increasing heirarchy. But when a sect is relatively removed from the chain of command any religion will evolve and merge with native customs, for example voodoo, santa ria (sp?) and other slave island religions. Organizing a religion is really an attempt to preserve the culture in an unaltered state.
Religion is really only an excuse not to get along, the real reason for almost all religious conflicts is more deeply rooted than a belief system. It just helps make the boots on the ground think they are fighting for something more meaningful. Basically from 1950-1980 capatalism was th US's religion and communism had to be over thrown for the same reason that in the roman times christianity had to be overthrown.
Re:murrayians aborigines were part erectus? (Score:3, Insightful)
Way ahead of you.
The link works fine for me. Play with it some.
Sigh, it's hosted on tripod, if someone clicks your link, they get this [tripod.com]. However, once I manually copied the link, clicking it brings me to the correct location.
I ain't white. That threw a wrench into your little program, didn't it?
Nope, what you said is still crap. And now you just added the stupid notion of "only whites can be racist" on top of your "teehee, aborigenese look different... they must be less evolved" load of BS.