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."

Comments

Preparing its defense

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really just an attempt by IBM to prepare a defense against SCO that shows that Wookiees do not, in fact, come from Endor.

Interesting

[dfn5]

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.

What would be interesting...

[jd]

Is to compare the results with Oxford Ancestors, who perform a very similar service and have done for some years now. OA claim to be able to pinpoint a region from which you are ultimately descended on the female line, and to make a good guess of the same on the male line.

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.

Is it worth $100.00?

[unk1911]

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. for only $100.00 plus ship/handling"

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

Re:Is it worth $100.00?

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

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 /. comment.

Warning!

[Anonymous Coward]

These cheek swabs are not oral! You have been warned.

Incremental Knowledge

[4of12]

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 (which does the mitochondrial trace through maternal ancestral lines), and Journey of Man, 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 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.

Fun with DNA samples

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like too see their reaction if someone sent them the DNA of a chimpanzee... Given the similarity between the two DNAs, it might take them them a while to figure that one out...

Our Complex History

[J05H]

This is an interesting project, it will help to fill in the holes in the knowledge of our origins. Most cultures have legends of the journeys that led to settling a new home, with this research we will see much more clearly who went where,

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