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Global DNA Project to Study Human Ancestry
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."
...till we make the Kwisatz Haderach?
Well, sir... the ancestral variation in the dog genome (partly since it is the result of centuries of artificial selection) is less than that in the human genome => fewer sites needed => cheaper. There is also an economy of scale, as I believe all AKC members are required to do this testing. BTW, the fact that the rarer breeds are done for "free" should indicate to you that this cost is being subsidized, perhaps by your AKC membership fees or someone else's (hint: nothing is really free).
/. comment.
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
One concern is that the folks may pervert the finding of this data to support one of two equally corrupt conclusions. One that finding a single lineage of all people (monogenism) endorses the Judeo-Christian beliefs in Adam & Eve. Or two that multiple sources of origin (polyenism) can justify racism - in that some lineages are "less" evolved than others. The dangers of these ideas are well documented by Louis Menand in his wonderful book "The Metaphysical Club"