Posted on 02/21/2008 1:50:58 PM PST by blam
Most Detailed Global Study Of Genetic Variation Completed
A schematic of worldwide human genetic variation, with colors representing different genetic types. The figure illustrates the great amout of genetic variation in Africa. (Credit: Illustration by Martin Soave/University of Michigan)
ScienceDaily (Feb. 21, 2008) — University of Michigan scientists and their colleagues at the National Institute on Aging have produced the largest and most detailed worldwide study of human genetic variation, a treasure trove offering new insights into early migrations out of Africa and across the globe.
Like astronomers who build ever-larger telescopes to peer deeper into space, population geneticists like U-M's Noah Rosenberg are using the latest genetic tools to probe DNA molecules in unprecedented detail, uncovering new clues to humanity's origins.
The latest study characterizes more than 500,000 DNA markers in the human genome and examines variations across 29 populations on five continents.
"Our study is one of the first in a new wave of extremely high-resolution genome scans of population genetic variation," said Rosenberg, an assistant research professor at U-M's Life Sciences Institute and co-senior author of the study, to be published in the Feb. 21 edition of Nature.
"Now that we have the technology to look at thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of genetic markers, we can infer human population relationships and ancient migrations at a finer level of resolution than has previously been possible."
The new study, led by Rosenberg and National Institute on Aging colleague Andrew Singleton, produced genetic data nearly 100 times more detailed than previous worldwide assessments of human populations. It shows that:
• A recently discovered type of human genetic variation, known as a copy-number variant or CNV, is a reliable addition to the toolkit of population geneticists and should speed the discovery of disease-related genes. Rosenberg and his colleagues discovered 507 previously unknown CNVs, which are large chunks of DNA—up to 1,000,000 consecutive "letters" of the genetic alphabet—that are either repeated or deleted entirely from a person's genome. Various diseases can be triggered by an abnormal gain or loss in the number of gene copies.
• It's sometimes possible to trace a person's ancestry to an individual population within a geographic region. While previous studies have found that broad-scale geographic ancestry could be successfully traced, the new results indicate "it's becoming increasingly possible to use genomics to refine the geographic position of an individual's ancestors with more and more precision," Rosenberg said.
• Human genetic diversity decreases as distance from Africa—the cradle of humanity—increases. People of African descent are more genetically diverse than Middle Easterners, who are more diverse than Asians and Europeans. Native Americans possess the least-diverse genomes. As a result, searching for disease-causing genes should require the fewest number of genetic markers among Native Americans and the greatest number of markers among Africans.
The results are being made available on publicly shared databases. "I hope the study will be an invaluable resource for understanding genomic variability and investigating genetic association with disease," said the NIA's Singleton.
The researchers analyzed DNA from 485 people. They examined three types of genetic variation: single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs; haplotypes; and CNVs.
If the human genome is viewed as a 3-billion-letter book of life, then SNPs represent single-letter spelling changes, haplotype variations equate to word changes, and CNVs are wholesale deletions or duplications of full pages.
The patterns revealed by the new study support the idea that humans originated in Africa, then spread into the Middle East, followed by Europe and Asia, the Pacific Islands, and finally to the Americas.
The results also bolster the notion of "serial founder effects," meaning that as people began migrating eastward from East Africa about 100,000 years ago, each successive wave of migrants carried a subset of the genetic variation held by previous groups.
"Diversity has been eroded through the migration process," Rosenberg said.
In addition to his position at the Life Sciences Institute, Rosenberg is an assistant professor of human genetics at the Medical School; an assistant professor of biostatistics at the School of Public Health; an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts; and an assistant research professor of bioinformatics at the Medical School's Center for Computational Medicine and Biology.
"This data set is so rich. It provides a much more comprehensive, cross-sectional snapshot of the human genome than previous studies," said Paul Scheet, a post-doctoral researcher in the U-M Department of Biostatistics and one of the lead authors.
"The next step for these studies is to sequence whole genomes," said Mattias Jakobsson, a post-doctoral researcher at the U-M Center for Computational Medicine and Biology and another lead author. "You would take 500 individuals, and you would just completely sequence everything, and then you'd have almost every important variant that's out there."
The work was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grants, the U-M Center for Genetics in Health and Medicine, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the Intramural Program of the National Institute on Aging.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Michigan.
Oh, like THAT would be the straw that broke the camels back. They need to get real. There is no evidence that anything in the Book of Mormon is anything more than (to quote Mark Twain)...
“...merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament.” Mark Twain
No linguistic data, no archaeological data, no cultural data, no historic data, no genetic data. It is a perfect record of absolute non-conformance to reality.
Luckily Mormons are good people and good Conservatives and don’t dwell much on their silly theology; they are too busy being Mormons.
The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
Gene Studies Confirm “Out Of Africa” Theories
Yahoo News | 2-20-2008 | Maggie Fox
Posted on 02/20/2008 5:42:03 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1973590/posts
Ancient skull dug up in Henan may bury ‘Out of Africa’ theory
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) | Jan 24, 2008
Posted on 01/24/2008 12:39:26 PM EST by charles m
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1958908/posts
Did a Tsunami Wipe Out a Cradle of Western Civilization?
Discover Magazine | 01.04.2008 | Evan Hadingham
Posted on 01/15/2008 11:53:15 AM EST by forkinsocket
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1954101/posts
Evolution Tied To Earth Movement [Carole King alert]
Eureka Alert | 12-19-2007 | M Royhan Gani
Posted on 12/20/2007 11:02:48 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1942624/posts
Man descended from early aardvark
UK Times online | January 21, 2003 | Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent
Posted on 01/21/2003 3:23:43 PM EST by CobaltBlue
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/826768/posts
And chased by sabertooth tigers.
Right Whale states a true but horrifying proposition for academia- the reluctant admission that there may actually have been an earth shattering global cataclysm recently, most likely during a period that is referred to by archaeologists as “the bronze age discontinuity”. The catastrophist approach to archaeology and anthropology has been actively suppressed and vilified in academia in spite of growing evidence that the archaeological and geological data and comparative analysis of mythologies of ancient and contemporary peoples make the catastrophist interpretation of history the only rational and compelling one. Academia can accurately be categorized as a cesspool of ideology and grant funding turf protection.
The Mount Toba eruption was thought to be a partial cause of the human genetic bottleneck, potentially reducing the human population to 2-10K individuals. And the human population that had migrated up to nearly Turkey went extinct, though those that made it to India/Australian coasts probably survived.
Hear! Hear! Never a truer word spoken.
Okay, but to mire this thread in ‘offal’, should we ping the Mormon brigade at BYU using surrogates at FR to refute something claimed by Joe Smith, now?
I have long held that if your parents never had children you probably won't either.
“100,000 years ago at least”
Historical ‘Science’, not Observational Science
It is both observational and historical. The observation of diversity within Africa and less diversity spreading out from there, as well as an observation of the cumulative difference and a measurement of the rate of differentiation leads one to ‘out of Africa’ hypothesis and the 100,000 year estimation.
According to the Toba link, after the catastrophe, humans would have migrated out of Africa to repopulate the earth, so no death of all Africans there.
Since the Toba event 74kya and a probable North American boloid event about 13,000 years ago, decimated human and other populations and caused significant downturns in worldwide temperature, does anyone have a catastrophic event for the triggering of the last ice age about 125,000 years ago?
The 'Hobbits' survived the Toba event on near-by Flores Island. Interestingly they disappeared about the time of the comet impact 12-13,000 years ago.
That makes me wonder if there were other pockets of humanity around the world that survived Toba only to succumb to another later event.
I'm thinking specifically about these folks: Vintage Skulls
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
IMO, ice ages are caused by large impact.”
I tend to agree, but I would also include monster volcanic events like Yellowstone, Long Valley, etc. I still want to know what big thing happened 125,000 years ago.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
