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:How many years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They could also
Re:How many years.... (Score:2)
The nation that had the second largest eugenics movement was the United States. Beginning with Connecticut in 1896, many states enacted marriage laws with eugenic criteria, prohibiting anyone who was "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded" from marrying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Eugenics_an
Ask /.-Designing a human eugenics program? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or alternately, they could encourage people to choose from certain subsets of population as determined on an individual basis. Even an extreme, like arranged marriages, if they are a superset of the personal selection criteria for the indiv
Re:How many years.... (Score:2)
"Many, many years, O'Neill".
Dude (Score:2)
Since when could the KH reboot the sun?
(shoots KH with HK)
DNA sample (Score:2, Funny)
PS. No horking big lugies.
ogg
Preparing its defense (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder... (Score:3, Funny)
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
Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Interesting (Score:3, Funny)
> I can't wait for them to discover that humans started their migration 5,000 years ago when they were chased out of eden by the dinosaurs.
You're on to them! They were going to use the DNA to backtrace the migration and find the flaming sword, which they will sell on ebay for a pretty penny.
And I'll form the head! (Score:2)
Dinosaurs with a flaming sword? Oh man, how did I miss it...those Saturday morning shows were documentaries...
Re: Interesting (Score:2)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
If creationist beliefs of the age of the earth are believed (where the 6000 comes from) then that should be over6000 years ago. The ~6000 year number was determined by the ArchBishop Usser in 1664 that the Earth was created on Oct 26, 4004 B.C. at 9:00 am. Which is just short of 6009 years ago. Man was created on Nov 1, 4004 BC and woman two days later on Nov 3, 4004 BC. So on Nov 4, the serpent tricked Eve into eating fruit from the tree of knowledge, and Adam &
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Funny)
So the Earth is a Scorpio? No wonder...
Re:Interesting (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What would be interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
If OA's regions flat-out contradict NG's, then one or both sets of data must be wrong. A fatal flaw exists in an assumption that has been made. Which would be valuable to know, from a scientific standpoint, even if it would hurt sales.
If the two agree, it isn't proof that they are accurate, but provided the work was independently carried out, it raises the chances that they really are onto something.
Re:What would be interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
My guess is that they'll have the same conclusions. Oxford Ancestors will probably be assisting in the project.
By the way, Spencer Wells, head
Adam and Eve never met (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it worth $100.00? (Score:5, Informative)
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]
Re:Is it worth $100.00? (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Sounds great (Score:2)
Re:Sounds great (Score:2)
It was called a boat.
Warning! (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
There have been some studies of human DNA and these have often produced very interesting results, showing accurately how people migrated across the globe.
The problem up to now is that these have been relatively small studies confined to specific issues - such as the colonisation of the Pacific islands, which happened from Indonesia, not South America (sorry, Thor).
A large-scale analysis of human DNA that includes Africa - the richest mix of DNA by far - will be very, very interesting.
For example, there are theories that modern Africans are largely descended from relatively recent immigrants from the Indian Ocean basin who recolonised from the East coast and mixed with aboriginal Africans - such as the Khoi and San - eventually pushing these into the margins.
Good stuff.
Incremental Knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)
The African exodus I think is pretty well understood. Although, there seems to have been multiple exodi (?) of hominid species that did not survive in the long term (such as the Neanderthal in Europe).
From what I understand, the story gets harder to piece together in the last part of the European migrations from Central Asia.
A couple of interesting TV shows on this were The Real Eve [discovery.com] (which does the mitochondrial trace through maternal ancestral lines), and Journey of Man [nationalgeographic.com], which relates to the more difficult task of tracing mutations in the Y chromosome handed done through paternal lines.
One of the earlier pioneers in the field, Brian Sykes of Oxford, started up a side business [google.com] where you can send swabs to obtain information about maternal and paternal markers in your genetic makeup (IIRC, about US$225).
A few years ago I got the analysis done and sent the results back to Ma 'n Pa for Mother's Day and Father's Day gifts.
How'd that work... (Score:3, Funny)
...when it turned out your paternal line came from the mailman? ;)
Re:How'd that work... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is an extensive summary of studies. [childsuppo...ysis.co.uk] As the summary suggests, rates of misattributed paternity vary widely, from about 1% in some areas to over 20% in others, mostly depending on social/economic status. However, the fact is, most of us are almost certain to have some interlopers in our heritage--we are all mongrels under the skin!
--Tom
Re:How'd that work... (Score:2)
Reminds me of "Don't be a Menace to South Central..." where some old man is hassling a kid, and the kid says "You aren't my daddy!....Are you?"
:)
Fun with DNA samples (Score:5, Funny)
What?!?!?! (Score:2)
So, they want people who immigrated a long time ago, and are not really interested in newer immigration? Because ancestrial migration doesn't count unless your the first to get there? This makes absolutly no sense what so ever.
Re:What?!?!?! (Score:2)
B) Isn't the point of the research to find out the what/when/where of human migration, WITHOUT taking the word of some questionable old stories?
I think this would be a VERY difficult study (Score:2)
And I suppose we should pretty much exclude all but "native americans" from any studies related to the new world. (The Americas) I think this study w
Our Complex History (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is the map I want to see more fully realized:
http://www.mitomap.org/WorldMigrations.pdf
There are interesting legends and recent research that Genographic project might help: were there Austronesian ("aborigine") migrations across the Pacific 40,000 years ago? Are modern Tibetans and Athapaskan speakers (Navaho) related through the so-called Amur River Culture? When and how often have the "X" haplogroups travelled to America, and were these only Neolithic migrations or did they occur throughout the Bronze and Iron ages? Finally, how much back-migration occured from the Americas to the Old World continents? I'm not the one to research it, but a correlation between Am-Indian oral lore and this geno-map could make for an interesting thesis.
My guess is that the project will show far more migration than previously expected - humans are nothing if not mobile.
josh
Cheeky Web Developers use DNA to migrate ... (Score:2, Funny)
... from platform to platform.
But I can't see why the National Geographic cares.
historical linguistics (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:historical linguistics (Score:2)
Cavalli-Sforza.
Here 's a link [friesian.com]
Re:historical linguistics (Score:2)
Of course, genetics != language so there is always going to be a gap between the different fields. It is important to keep the genetic results independent of the linguistic results initially and only integrate them later in the research.
North and South America (Score:3, Interesting)
It is generally agreed that the first humans arrived in the americas around 25-30,000 years ago but their migration from that point on is a mystery.
One belief is that they migrated south through a northern passage as the polar ice-caps melted. Another is that they migrated down the west coast from the north pole to south America befoer the ice-caps melted. There is a third (more controversial) theory that they migrated by boat from africa and then moved north up the continent.
It will be interesting to see what conclusions are drawn.
Re:North and South America (Score:2)
Re:North and South America (Score:2)
/. editor glitch (Score:2, Informative)
It has to be said. (Score:2, Funny)
If crumpled up tissues count as these cheeked swabs then I can meet their 100,000 quota by tonight.
Don't worry, I wont have to change any of my usual plans.
Other research (Score:5, Informative)
Some research on this was done before.
There was also this fellow, British I think, who did a documentary about early human migration using genetics, he was on TV (PBS?) a few years back. Nice work. He showed that there were two waves out of Africa. One hugged the coastline reaching India then all the way to Australia, and another going to central Asia, then staying there for a while, and then a branch going west to Europe, and another going east to Siberia, Beringia, and eventually to the Americans. Can't remember his name. Rats!
Some other resources:
Scientists trace human migration using DNA [sciencedaily.com].
Wikipedia article on Human migration [wikipedia.org].
Stephen Oppenheimer [bradshawfoundation.com] did a genetic map [bradshawfoundation.com].
Kurgan Genetics [wikipedia.org].
Neanderthaals and mtDNA [pbs.org]
Re:Other research (Score:2)
Re:Other research (Score:2)
The goal of the new research is to answer questions left unanswered by the previous research.
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:What's indigenous? (Score:2)
Hence the point of tracing the comings and goings with DNA.
I'd guess "indigenous" means "grandma can't remember any mention of immigrating" or something like it. As opposed to "I remember the old country..."
DNA is the ANTI CHRIST (Score:4, Interesting)
The best case of DNA invalidating a religion is Mormonism. The founder of Mormonism claimed to have translated a book that was written by a people that migrated from the Middle East to the American continent. He claimed that these immigrants were the "priciple ancestors" of the modern day American Indian.
Well it turns out that DNA proves what science has been saying for years. The American Indian is of Asiatic decent. Any other examples of DNA destroying a religion?
Re:DNA is the ANTI CHRIST (Score:2, Informative)
The failure of the US school system is appalling at times.
Please go read up on what the term "mitochondrial Eve" actually refers to. Here's a hint: she wasn't the first human.
Tin Foil cheek coverings (Score:2, Funny)
Prepare to superglue foil inside you entire mouth. You know, just in case of some forced swab penetration.
dangerous (Score:2, Flamebait)
On a more serious note (in case you did not guess the above was a joke), I always thought that historical
linguistics could provide the same answers.
Re:dangerous (Score:2)
Don't waste all that time and money! (Score:2)
Re:Don't waste all that time and money! (Score:2)
ok (Score:2)
Sounds really good!.. cant wait to join.. just like i cant wait to join some mercenary force in africa run by a bunch of stupid british people!.
This is frustrating... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, there is another model called the multi-regional model that states Homo sapiens evolved sperately on each of the different continents. How could this happen you say? Because enough interbreeding went on to maintain species integrity. Proponents of the Out-of-Africa model tend to ignore fossil evidence from Dali China that shows a skull exhibiting charateristics closer to H. sapiens than H. erectus - pre-dating the earliest evidence from Africa. Or other evidence such as a blending of charateristics in the middle east (mix of Neanderthal/H. Sapiens): EXACTLY where you would expect to find that sort of thing.
Check out the following link: http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2005/02/more-on-mult
Or google: Milford Wolpoff http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Milford+Wolp
The Out-of-Africanists are force fitting a theory on the existing data. Something they are able to get away with because the current "most popular" scientists (D. Johanson, Leekey) push it. Its unfortunate that politics has worked its way into science.
Remember, you only find what you are looking for.
Re:This is frustrating... (Score:3, Interesting)
If populations are interbreeding sufficiently to maintain genetic homogeneity then they were not separate in the relevant sense, and cannot be characterized as evolving separately. "Evolving simultaneously as one large, well-connected, interbreeding p
Drawing conclusions before the data (Score:2, Informative)
So it is obvious they are publishing a map based on the data they claim they "will" gather. From the first paragraph of the article:
Re:Drawing conclusions before the data (Score:2)
Great News Really (Score:2)
already been done (Score:2, Informative)
murrayians aborigines were part erectus? (Score:2)
BTW, most aborigines has visual cortexes that are 25% larger than other humans.
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:murrayians aborigines were part erectus? (Score:2)
As for the rest of your politically correct() routine, skip it. I ain't white. That threw a wrench into your little program, didn't it? Throw an exception?
Get back to me when you have read a few hundred books, and maybe we can talk then....
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
So, will IBM own my DNA? (Score:2)
While Choicepoint is not mentioned in TFA, If you don't think they and their like-minded competitors are salivating on getting their hands on everyone's DNA, then you have not been paying attention.
IBM does the collection, Choicepoint could do the harvesting, it all sounds just wonderful, doesn't it?
I wonder what the going rate for Briteny Spear's DNA is?
Correction: "aren't salivating" (Score:2)
Must remember... PREVIEW!
Racism and Polygenism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Huge DNA repository... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Polishing the tin foil (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Polishing the tin foil (Score:2)
Web browsers. And the address of this site.
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
And what if they sneezed a little virus particle onto the letter that they wrote to you!?
Re:Great (Score:2, Interesting)
>There's probably DNA floating around EVERYWHERE by now!
Human skin flakes, a.k.a. dander, is everywhere that humans are. It just flakes off and floats away.
It's kinda creepy to think that every breathe we take may include a little bit of the person in the next cubicle. Remind me to hand out loofas at the next staff meeting.
I used to do something similar (Score:3, Interesting)
Later on the data-entry part, I had changed the screen resolution from 640x480 to 800x600 -- so I could see the whole entry form without scrolling. When someone noticed this, they send out 3 technicians: two to figure out how to change the res back, a
Re:Of the Devil (Score:2)
So you are trying to keep all of us ignorant because you wish to remain ignorant and you don't understand??? The guy (you?) said that looking at the way God created the world is "spitting in his face." That's promoting ignorance.
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 b
Monotheists are the worsts of the religions. (Score:2)
Gods: Plural.
When the Romans encountered new religions in their travel, they didn't go "oh noes, other gods! The central tenets of our religion must be false!", they simply went "hey, new gods, what did you say there name was? And what does he do? Thunder, lightning?
Re:Christians are the worst of the religions. (Score:2)
This is why I am Buddist/Agnostic - I find it hypocritical on the one hand 'loving thy neighbor', and on the other hand damning him to hell for being Hindu (or whatever - take your pick).
Thankfully the 1st Amendment grants Americans the freedom to pursue whatever religion they see fit - which is a good thing,
Re:Of the Devil (Score:2)
I say there isn't any proof of a God-like entity existing, but you do. So, prove to me that Jesus H Fucking Christ existed.
Re:Educational Television (Score:3, Funny)
I've never heard this on CSI: "We searched CODIS and the National Geographic DNA Database."
Re:Educational Television (Score:2, Funny)
>I've never heard this on CSI: "We searched CODIS and the National Geographic DNA Database."
No? It was the same episode where they searched Slashdot for people who could take a joke. They didn't find anything.
Re:Educational Television (Score:2)
Re:Educational Television (Score:2)
Re:Educational Television (Score:2)
Good... Maybe we'll nearly erase bigotry if most people discover they each have up to 10% blood from other races.
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
No, I don't think this means that they were an evil company in the late 30s - early 40s, but I do think it indicates that they were a big business. Global market, don't really care how you use our products - just buy them.
Re:Is this really science??? (Score:2, Informative)
The first man being "Adam" is a geneticist convention. Given that the Y-chromosome remains unaltered during reproduction aside from mutation and retrovirus based alterations, and the differences in modern day Y-chromosomes are extremely small within humanity, but (relatively speaking) extremely large with other primates, there have been several
Re:Is this really science??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is this really science??? (Score:3, Informative)
about 60,000 years ago, the population of homo sapiens sapiens was reduced to ~2000. The current hypothesis is that the supervolcano under Yellowstone erupted and caused world-wide havoc on the ecosystem causing mass die-offs in populations.
Yes, about 74,000 years ago.
Yes, there is a supervolcano under Yellowstone. And it could blow anytime on a geological time scale. But it hasn't erupted for about 600,000 years.
The Toba [bbc.co.uk] supervolcano in Indonesia is deemed responsible for the genetic bottleneck observ
Re:Is this really science??? (Score:5, Informative)
AFAIK the African origins of humankind are fairly well established. The fact that genetic anthropologists decided to call the oldest known common male ancestor "adam" and the oldest female one "eve" just shows that they have a sense of humour and history, not that what they do is quackery.
So, yes, it is science.
Re:Is this really science??? (Score:2, Informative)
> from Africa is highly debatable.
Uh, no... it's not. Too much evidence from too many disparate fields. Most Creationists still aren't ready to accept it, but I wouldn't call that much of a debate. Linguistics, archeology, paleontology, genetics, etc... all point to the widely established theory that Africa is the orginial home of the hominids, we sapiens included.
re: origin debate (Score:2, Interesting)
So, as the evidence mounts in favour of a recent African origin, one might ask why we continue to speculate about our evolutionary history. Why are we still digging if the roots have been unearthed? The answer is that in spite of the facts, there is still no final answer. None of the deductions made thus far are watertight, and the methods and approaches e
Re:We all have one parents (Adame and Eve) (Score:2, Interesting)
Even in translation the styles are starkly different.
Re:Security (Score:2)
Re:Common Ancestor (Score:2)