Posted on 04/13/2005 4:49:43 PM PDT by blam
Genes to help tell 'story of everybody'
Last Update: Wednesday, April 13, 2005. 7:33pm (AEST)
The Genographic Project will search for clues about how humans spread around the globe.
Indigenous people around the world will be asked to supply a cheek swab to help geneticists answer the question of how humanity spread from Africa.
The National Geographic Society and IBM hope to sample 100,000 people or more and look for ancient clues buried in living DNA to calculate who came from where and when.
For $US100, anyone who wants to can supply his or her own cheek swab for a personalised analysis and perhaps to contribute to the research.
Geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells said: "We all came out of Africa but how did we get to where we are today? What we are aiming for is the story of everybody."
Experts in related fields such as population genetics, archaeology, evolution science, linguistics and palaeontology will help in the five-year project.
Fossils provide some clues about where people settled as they evolved and moved from Africa to colonise every continent except Antarctica.
But mysteries remain, for example, about how people first got to Australia 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, or when and from where the first humans arrived in the Americas.
All continents
Linguistics and DNA provide many clues but the so-called Genographic Project will aim to systematically look at all peoples on all continents.
Teams in China, Russia, India, Lebanon, Brazil, South Africa, Paris, Britain and Australia have signed on to help.
Mr Wells says some groups may be hostile to the effort. "There has been a history of exploitation of indigenous groups around the world," he said.
But, he added, experts on dealing with various groups will help sell the idea. "It's a question of explaining the science," he said.
Geneticists will look at little changes in DNA code that have been used by experts to trace human history.
Mitochondrial DNA, handed down virtually unchanged from mothers to their children, is one source that was used to calculate the so-called ancestral Eve, who would have lived in Africa about 180,000 years ago.
Men have their own version, found in the Y chromosome, which is inherited with very little change from father to son.
Tiny mistakes in the code that occur with each generation can be used as a kind of genetic clock to track backward.
People who buy the mail-in swab kit are unlikely to add to the indigenous people's database but can find out something about their own ancient ancestry and perhaps add to the effort, Mr Wells said.
Hmmm, I wonder how many 'cold-case-files' this will close?
GGG Ping.
Hey, you mean if I send them $100 and a cheek swab, they will tell me I came from Pennsylvania? That is so cool -- excuse me while I dash out for my checkbook.
Who's gonna want to read that? It's 99.9999999999999% filler.
I'm not against this kind of research but I always wonder about the practical side of this. I wonder about what people will get out of this knowledge.
I'm not sure I would want my DNA profile 'ending-up' in an insurance company's data base.
Just curious..what part of PA?
Right down near the Delaware line in the small town of Chadds Ford. How about you?
I want to know where blue and brown eyed races diverged.
Did Adam and Eve have blue or brown eyes?
Fascinating stuff!
North of Pittsburgh..
It never fails. The only people who ask me where in PA I come from are always from the opposite corner of the state. I think you have a more neighborly bunch there. All that and Iron City too!!
Fascinating article on fascinating work. We all want to know where we came from.
related, older:
Geographic Society Is Seeking a Genealogy of Humankind
NY Times | April 13, 2005 | NICHOLAS WADE
Posted on 04/13/2005 3:33:59 AM PDT by Pharmboy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1382672/posts
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A member of the Lenape Nation? < smirk >
I lived in PA for a year when I was two years old. I wonder if the DNA kit will turn that up?
I wonder how many woodpiles will have to be examined.
Near Andrew Wyeth? I went to high school in Aston, and a couple of "promising" artist-types I knew spent all their spare time in Chads Ford with pen and ink. One kid was taken in by Wyeth as a student for a few years.
Years later I did a daily commute from home in Haverford to Greenville, Delaware. Love that Brandywine Creek area.
If the family of man came from Africa, how can there be indigenous peole "all over the world?"
If the family of man came from Africa, how can there be indigenous people "all over the world?"
It looks like if you and your relatives stay in one place long enough, you're allowed to call yourself 'indigenous.'
For example, Mr Adrian Targett can consider himself indigenous to England.
"Targett learned recently that he is the direct descendant of a man who lived 9,000 years ago, and whose bones were found at the turn of the century in Cheddar's famous caves. Scientists compared the DNA from one of Cheddar Man's molars to that of scrapings taken from the mouths of 20 local Cheddarites, and Targett was a match."
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