Newsletter #14
DNA Consulting Renamed
DNA Testing Systems
Inks Agreement with DNAPrint Genomics, Moves Offices to Scottsdale, Arizona
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – (March 11, 2008) – DNA Testing Systems, previously of Santa Fe, N.M., and formerly named DNA Consulting, has signed an agreement to sell DNAPrint Genomics’ line of biogeographical ancestry tests and has moved its offices to Scottsdale, Ariz.
DNAPrint Genomics was one of the first DNA testing companies to be formed in an industry now estimated to be worth over $150 million in consumer sales. It was launched in Sarasota, Florida, in 1997 to commercialize the biogeographical, and proprietary, genetic markers developed from the work of Mark Shriver, a biogenetics professor at Pennsylvania State University.
DNA Testing was a spin-off from the research of founder Donald N. Yates into the Jewish and American Indian genetics of a rare Appalachian ethnic group called Melungeons, a family background to which he belongs. “I had to start my own company to understand my own unusual DNA test results,” Yates said. “And then I was doing so many consultations for Melungeon cousins that I decided to commercialize my sideline and get paid for what I was doing.”
Donald Yates of DNA Testing
Yates moved his business from Savannah, Ga., where he was a professor, to Santa Fe, N.M., in 2004 and has now settled in Scottsdale, where he hopes one day to retire. The company uses genomics laboratories in Salt Lake City, Utah; Richmond, Calif., and Sarasota, Fla.
DNA Testing sells DNAPrint® tests through a large web presence, marketing them as Whole DNA, a test that estimates percentages of American Indian and other admixture; EurasianDNA, which divides a customer’s DNA into four regions of Eurasia, and EuroDNA 2.0, the newest ancestry test from DNAPrint. EuroDNA 2.0 uses discoveries in genetic markers and human migration to determine an individual’s proportion of ancestry in five parts of Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula.
According to Yates, “We are finding that many people who think they are exclusively English, Irish and Scottish have a large element of Spanish and Portuguese ancestry they did not suspect.” One reason, he said, was that the British Isles were settled chiefly by a people very much like the Basques after the last Ice Age.
Of the handful of DNA testing companies in the United States, DNA Testing is the only one that specializes in customized and personalized reports. “We’re rather boutique-like in our approach,” said Yates, “and probably want to keep it that way.” In addition to biogeographical DNA tests, the company also sells traditional paternity, Y chromosome (male) and mitochondrial (female-passed DNA) tests.
For more information, visit DNA Testing at www.dnaconsultants.com or call toll free 1-877-473-5155.
The Late Pleistocene Dispersal of Modern Humans in the Americas
Ted Goebel et al.
When did humans colonize the Americas? From where did they come and what routes did they take? These questions have gripped scientists for decades, but until recently answers have proven difficult to find. Current genetic evidence implies dispersal from a single Siberian population toward the Bering Land Bridge no earlier than about 30,000 years ago (and possibly after 22,000 years ago), then migration from Beringia to the Americas sometime after 16,500 years ago. The archaeological records of Siberia and Beringia generally support these findings, as do archaeological sites in North and South America dating to as early as 15,000 years ago. If this is the time of colonization, geological data from western Canada suggest that humans dispersed along the recently deglaciated Pacific coastline. There was another dispersal several thousand years later responsible, perhaps, for the Clovis Culture.
(Ed. Note: While this theory can account for the majority of lineages studied today among American Indians, it cannot explain the high incidence of mitochondrial haplogroups B or X, which are not found in Mongolia or Siberia in significant amounts.)
Beyond Out of Africa
Jun Z. Li et al.
Science 22 February 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5866, pp. 1100 - 1104
Human genetic diversity is shaped by both demographic and biological factors and has fundamental implications for understanding the genetic basis of diseases. We studied 938 unrelated individuals from 51 populations of the Human Genome Diversity Panel at 650,000 common single-nucleotide polymorphism loci. Individual ancestry and population substructure were detectable with very high resolution. The relationship between haplotype heterozygosity and geography was consistent with the hypothesis of a serial founder effect with a single origin in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, we observed a pattern of ancestral allele frequency distributions that reflects variation in population dynamics among geographic regions. This data set allows the most comprehensive characterization to date of human genetic variation.
Read extensive discussion on Dienekes' Anthropology Blog.
Y-chromosome diversity characterizes the Gulf of Oman
Alicia M Cadenas et al.
European Journal of Human Genetics (February 2008) 16, 374–386
Arabia has served as a strategic crossroads for human disseminations, providing a natural connection between the distant populations of China and India in the east to the western civilizations along the Mediterranean. To explore this region's critical role in the migratory episodes leaving Africa to Eurasia and back, high-resolution Y-chromosome analysis of males from the United Arab Emirates (164), Qatar (72) and Yemen (62) was performed. The role of the Levant in the Neolithic dispersal of the E3b1-M35 sublineages is supported by the data, and the distribution and STR-based analyses of J1-M267 representatives points to their spread from the north, most likely during the Neolithic. With the exception of Yemen, southern Arabia, South Iran and South Pakistan display high diversity in their Y-haplogroup substructure possibly a result of gene flow along the coastal crescent-shaped corridor of the Gulf of Oman facilitating human dispersals. Elevated rates of consanguinity may have had an impact in Yemen and Qatar, which experience significant heterozygote deficiencies at various hypervariable autosomal STR loci.
Check Out Heredity's Free Podcast Series
Each month Elli Leadbeater and Steve Le Comber present a free audio show. The podcast features interviews with the people behind the science and a digest of breaking news from Heredity editor Richard Nichols at Queen Mary University of London.
Fly in the Ointment of Evolutionary Theory?
Featured in January's episode is H.-J. Bandelt of the University of Hamburg, a leading statistician in the area of population genetics. His commentary on mutation rates, "Clock debate: when times are a-changin': Time dependency of molecular rate estimates: tempest in a teacup," appeared in Heredity, vol. 100, in February 2008. According to Bandelt, many current studies on the molecular clock use outmoded data and confused models to arrive at their conclusions regarding human evolution and ancient migrations. Experts do not always distinguish between hot spots in DNA sequences and an average rate of mutation. They may base their suppositions about changes in coding regions (genes) on variation in non-coding regions such as the control loop in mitochondrial DNA. For these reasons, many of our theories about time to coalescence of genetic types may be essentially flawed. Bandelt mentions the model of Amerind migration as an example.
You can subscribe to the service and receive the latest episode in your email or browse the archives. Listen to the podcast now.
Iceland's deCODE Sharpens Image
"Backed by years of experience deCODE has created the most complete genetic map of the human genome and has an unrivalled track record in mapping and validating disease genes for common and complex diseases." Such is the hype in genomics giant deCODE's new advertising campaign. How much is science and how much is marketing? Judge for yourself by going to their website. Here's more: "deCODE is also leveraging its expertise in human genetics and integrated drug discovery and development capabilities to offer innovative products and services in DNA-based diagnostics, bioinformatics, genotyping, structural biology, drug discovery and clinical development."
Cousin Marriages Produce More Children
Science 8 February 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5864, pp. 813 - 816
An Association Between the Kinship and Fertility of Human Couples
Agnar Helgason et al.
Previous studies have reported that related human couples tend to produce more children than unrelated couples but have been unable to determine whether this difference is biological or stems from socioeconomic variables. Our results, drawn from all known couples of the Icelandic population born between 1800 and 1965, show a significant positive association between kinship and fertility, with the greatest reproductive success observed for couples related at the level of third and fourth cousins. Owing to the relative socioeconomic homogeneity of Icelanders, and the observation of highly significant differences in the fertility of couples separated by very fine intervals of kinship, we conclude that this association is likely to have a biological basis.
Female Perogative
Male Presumption
Science 25 January 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5862
Female choice is thought to drive evolution through sexual selection. It has been assumed that females over time would show consistent preferences for the same male traits. However, Chaine and Lyon (p. 459; cover) found in a long-term study of sexual selection in lark buntings that females have flexible patterns of choice for male traits over several years. This finding explains both the stability of traits under sexual selection and the evolution of multiple male sexual signals. Analyses of phenotypic selection with short time frames can lead to incorrect predictions about the trajectory of sexual selection, which might explain earlier contradictory findings.
DNA SEQUENCING:
A Plan to Capture Human Diversity in 1000 Genomes
Jocelyn Kaiser
Science 25 January 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5862, p. 395
Over the next 3 years, an international team plans to create a massive new catalog containing the complete genome sequences of 1000 individuals. It will help fill out the list of new genetic markers for common diseases that came out in 2007.
BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:
Human Genetic Variation
Elizabeth Pennisi
Science 318/5858 (21 December 2007) 1842-43.
Equipped with faster, cheaper technologies for sequencing DNA and assessing variation in genomes on scales ranging from one to millions of bases, researchers are finding out how truly different we are from one another. Read article .
Genetics News Highlight of 2007
According to the Editors of Nature
First whole human genome decoded
James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, and genomics pioneer Craig Venter announced that their full genomes had been sequenced. The achievements were the first in an anticipated wave of personal-genome sequencing and crucial steps towards personalized medicines tailored to an individual's genetic makeup. Watson's genome, announced in June, was analysed by Connecticut company 454 Life Sciences' new rapid-sequencing technique. Venter's, published in September, was the first fully sequenced diploid genome — detailing DNA inherited from both parents — and revealed that human genetic variation is greater than previously thought.
In November, Google-backed Californian biotech firm 23andMe launched a $1,000 personal genome service; the same month that Icelandic deCODE genetics offered DNA testing for disease-linked genes for the same price. And 2007 saw a splurge of research papers from genome-wide disease-association studies, including diabetes and cancer.
New Evolution Textbook Receives Good Review
A textbook covering all aspects of evolution puts the spotlight on the molecular motor that drives it.
Evolution, by Nicholas H. Barton, Derek E. G. Briggs, Jonathan A. Eisen, David B. Goldstein & Nipam H. Patel
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press: 2007. 833 pp. $100
Keeping pace with change
A review by Daniel Hart
Textbooks in evolutionary biology have generally kept pace with [recent] changes and several excellent books are available. This new one by Barton and colleagues is among the best. The production quality is superb in layout, composition, typesetting, colour palette, illustrations and gorgeous half-tones; and the writing is excellent, as one might expect from such a stellar cast of experts in population genetics, palaeontology, human genetics, bacterial genomics and developmental biology (respectively).
The book is in four parts. The first is a history of evolutionary thinking and evidence for the evolutionary process, which clarifies common misconceptions about evolution and rebuts 'intelligent design'. The latter is unfortunately necessary in the United States, where people who think that space aliens have landed on Earth outnumber those who believe in the darwinian theory of human evolution by about 3:1.
Part I also includes an excellent introduction to molecular biology, although I suspect that much of this duplicates what most students already know. Part II, on the origin and diversification of life, is up to date with discussions on the last universal common ancestor, as well as being an outstanding introduction to evo-devo. Part III comprises about half the book and deals with the genetic mechanisms of evolution, including speciation, in a treatment that is fresh, thorough and professional. Subtle concepts, including Fisher's geometrical theory of adaptation and the coalescent, are clearly described with minimal mathematics. The final section is devoted to human diversity and evolution, and includes an engaging discussion of human nature.
This book may not fit every instructor's needs. Some may prefer a different balance of origin, diversity, molecular evolution, population genetics and human evolution, or they may need a textbook written at a different level. But every instructor should examine this book and make an individual decision.
Turkish Population Not as Asian as You May Think
Alu insertion polymorphisms and an assessment of the genetic contribution of Central Asia to Anatolia with respect to the Balkans
Ceren Caner Berkman et al.
American Journal of Physical Anthropology (online early) 10.1002
From Dieneke's Anthropology Blog: "In the evolutionary history of modern humans, Anatolia acted as a bridge between the Caucasus, the Near East, and Europe. Because of its geographical location, Anatolia was subject to migrations from multiple different regions throughout time. The last, well-known migration was the movement of Turkic speaking, nomadic groups from Central Asia. They invaded Anatolia and then the language of the region was gradually replaced by the Turkic language. . . . Together with the data compiled from other databases, the similarity of the Anatolian population to that of the Balkans and Central Asia has been visualized by multidimensional scaling method. Analysis suggested that, genetically, Anatolia is more closely related with the Balkan populations than to the Central Asian populations. . . . In the present study, the Central Asian contribution to Anatolia was estimated as 13%. This was the lowest value among the populations analyzed."
Other genetic surveys have estimated the incidence of Central Asian genes in Eastern Europe as only 3%.
Is Evolution Itself Evolving?
Not the notion of evolution, which of course is always changing, but the reality of evolution and the genetic mutations underpinning it. Are mutations in humans increasing?
Yes, according to John Hawks et al. in "Recent Acceleration of Human Adaptive Evolution" published online December 17 in PNAS 10/1073.
Want to know more? Read an explanation by Razib in the blog Gene Expression.
Genomics sizes up
China launches large-scale human sequencing initiative
Jane Qiu & Erika Check Hayden
Published online 16 January 2008 in Nature 451, 234
Next-generation human genomics has arrived. The first large-scale whole-genome sequencing project has now begun in China, and an international multi-genome sequencing programme is hot on its heels.
The Yanhuang Project, which will sequence the entire genomes of 100 Chinese individuals over 3 years was announced by the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) on 8 January. Ye Jia, a spokeswoman for the project, said that once it is completed, the BGI aims to sequence the genomes of thousands more people, including ethnic groups from other Asian countries.
And a large international project, which aims to sequence the genomes of close to 1,000 individuals, is expected to be formally unveiled by the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, later this week. As yet it doesn't have a name, but is informally called the '1,000 genomes' project and the 'Multigenome project'. It will probably include the hundreds of individuals who participated in the International HapMap Project — an ongoing study of genetic diversity — as well as hundreds of other individuals.
The BGI will also participate in the 1,000 genomes project, says director Yang Huanming. However, only participants who meet the ethics and consent rules decided on by the international collaboration will be able to join that study, he says.
The projects usher in what many scientists think will be a new era of large-scale genomics — made possible with rapid-sequencing technologies — that will lead to more powerful comparisons between and within populations. Last year, scientists Craig Venter and James Watson became the first to release their complete individual DNA sequences. And a team led by George Church at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has begun the 'Personal Genome Project' that will examine portions of DNA from ten individuals who have agreed to share their information with the rest of the world.
But the Yanhuang Project — named after two emperors thought to be the ancestors of China's largest ethnic group — is the first to examine the entire genomes of private individuals. The first individual sequenced in the Yanhuang Project was a researcher; the second paid 10 million yuan (about US$1.4 million) to have his genome sequenced, Yang says. It is unclear whether such people will qualify for the international project, whose rules on confidentiality of data and the informed consent of participants may differ from China's.
Whole-genome sequencing studies are expected to deepen our scientific understanding of populations such as the Chinese, whose genetics have not been studied in great detail. The findings will inform medical research specific to those populations, and improve our understanding of human history, says Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley. “One of the exciting things about having so many sequences from Chinese individuals is that we will be able to say how much genetic exchange there has been between continents since [early humans migrated] out of Africa. That's been very hotly debated.”
The sequencing will allow scientists to add more detail to their maps of human diversity. The last large study of diversity, the HapMap, analysed only single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs — places in which DNA differs between two individuals by just one letter of the genetic code. This approach allows scientists to hunt for relatively common genetic variants. But the evidence linking disease to rare variants is growing, says Richard Myers, director of the Stanford Human Genome Center in Palo Alto, California. Whole-genome sequencing will improve detection of these rare variants, and offer a more complete understanding of the genetics of many human traits, he predicts.
"It's going to be very useful to sequence genomes from all populations and have large enough numbers so you can do comparisons between populations,” Myers says. “Even if you don't care about disease, it's going to help us look at human population history and phenotypes not relevant to disease, such as craniofacial structure, eye colour, hair colour and other fascinating things."
Discerning the ancestry of European Americans in genetic association studies
Alkes Price et al.
European Americans are often treated as a homogeneous group, but in fact form a structured population due to historical immigration of diverse source populations. Discerning the ancestry of European Americans genotyped in association studies is important in order to prevent false positive or negative associations due to population stratification and to identify genetic variants whose contribution to disease risk differs across European ancestries. Here, we investigate empirical patterns of population structure in European Americans, analyzing 4,198 samples from four genome-wide association studies to show that components roughly corresponding to northwest European, southeast European and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are the main sources of European American population structure. Building on this insight, we constructed a panel of 300 validated markers that are highly informative for distinguishing these ancestries. We demonstrate that this panel of markers can be used to correct for stratification in association studies that do not generate dense genotype data.
Get the whole article here.
mtDNA haplogroups of indigenous Mexican populations
Characterization of mtDNA haplogroups in 14 Mexican indigenous populations.
Hum Biol. 79/3 (Jun 2007)313-20
R. I. Peñaloza-Espinosa et al.
ABSTRACT: In this descriptive study we investigated the genetic structure of 513 Mexican indigenous subjects grouped in 14 populations (Mixteca-Alta, Mixteca-Baja, Otomi, Purépecha, Tzeltal, Tarahumara, Huichol, Nahua-Atocpan, Nahua-Xochimilco, Nahua-Zitlala, Nahua-Chilacachapa, Nahua-Ixhuatlancillo, Nahua-Necoxtla, and Nahua-Coyolillo) based on mtDNA haplogroups. These communities are geographically and culturally isolated; parents and grandparents were born in the community. Our data show that 98.6% of the mtDNA was distributed in haplogroups A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, D1, and D2. Haplotype X6 was present in the Tarahumara (1/53) and Huichol (3/15), and haplotype L was present in the Nahua-Coyolillo (3/38). The first two principal components accounted for 95.9% of the total variation in the sample. The mtDNA haplogroup frequencies in the Purépecha and Zitlala were intermediate to cluster 1 (Otomi, Nahua-Ixhuatlancillo, Nahua-Xochimilco, Mixteca-Baja, and Tzeltal) and cluster 2 (Nahua-Necoxtla, Nahua-Atocpan, and Nahua-Chilacachapa). The Huichol, Tarahumara, Mixteca-Alta, and Nahua-Coyolillo were separated from the rest of the populations. According to these findings, the distribution of mtDNA haplogroups found in Mexican indigenous groups is similar to other Amerindian haplogroups, except for the African haplogroup found in one population.
Population structure in Sweden - A Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA analysis
T. Lappalainen et al.
From Dienekes Anthropology Blog
ABSTRACT: A population sample representing the current Swedish population was analyzed for both maternally and paternally inherited markers with the aim of characterizing the genetic variation and structure of a modern North European population. We genotyped 12 Y-chromosomal and 27 mitochondrial DNA SNPs from DNA extracted and amplified from Guthrie cards of all the children born in Sweden during one week in 2003. The sample set consisted of 1914 samples (960 males) grouped according to place of birth. The ancient migration patterns are reflected in the clear north-south gradients in several palaeolithic and neolithic haplogroups in the mtDNA (U5, I, K, T, X) and the Y chromosome (R1b, N3). The haplogroup frequencies of the counties closest to Finland and Norway showed clear associations to the neighboring populations, resulting from the formation of the nations during the past millennium. Moreover, the recent immigration waves of the 20th century are visible both maternally and paternally, and have led to increased diversity and divergence from the main population in the major cities. Unfavorable population development in the ancient or recent past can be detected in several remote counties with low diversities and other signs of low population size and/or population crises. In conclusion, our study yielded valuable information about the various factors affecting the structure of the modern Swedish population that is vital for the use of the population in large population-based studies. Our sampling strategy, nonselective on the current population rather than stratified according to ancestry, represents the future of genetic studies in the increasingly panmictic populations of the world.
Use of Y Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Population Structure in Tracing Human Migrations
By P.A. Underhill and T. Kivisild
Annu Rev Genet. 41 (Dec. 2007) 539-564.
ABSTRACT: Well-resolved molecular gene trees illustrate the concept of descent with modification and exhibit the opposing processes of drift and migration, both of which influence population structure. Phylogenies of the maternally inherited mtDNA genome and the paternally inherited portion of the nonrecombining Y chromosome retain sequential records of the accumulation of genetic diversity. Although knowledge regarding the diversity of the entire human genome will be needed to completely characterize human genetic evolution, these uniparentally inherited loci are unique indicators of gender in modulating the extant population structure. We compare and contrast these loci for patterns of continuity and discreteness and discuss how their phylogenetic diversity and progression provide means to disentangle ancient colonization events by pioneering migrants from subsequent overlying migrations. We introduce new results concerning Y chromosome founder haplogroups C, DE, and F that resolve their previous trifurcation and improve the harmony with the mtDNA recapitulation of the out-of-Africa migration.
According to Dienekes Anthropology Blog, "this is a very important review paper which is a must-read for anyone interested in human population history. The new results allued in the abstract involve the discovery of the CF and DE clades, which the authors propose were involved in separate Out-of-Africa founder events. Previously, with the exception of the Paleoafrican Y-chromosome clades A and B, all other human Y chromosomes fell into three separate clades C, DE (also known as YAP), and F. Now, C and F are shown to be united by a common ancestory into a new clade CF."
DNA does NOT Support Bering Land Bridge Sole Source
Here we go again. A small number of Siberians crossed the Bering Strait when it was dry land 12,000 years ago and populated the entire New World.
I refer to the article in PLoS (Public Library of Science) Genetics, titled "Genetic Variation and Population Structure in Native Americans," by S. Wang et al. So far from vindicating a decrepit theory that had nearly drawn its last breath in anthropology circles in the late 1990s, the "new evidence" does nothing but perpetuate geneticists' circular reductionist logic again. Set up a survey the right way and you will get the results you want.
First, the 678 markers the scientists investigated are those they have determined are associated with Native Americans in the first place. Surprise! They were found in high frequencies in the 29 Native American populations of the study -- the very populations that have been studied to death since the 1980s. One much-cited study of alleged Siberian origins of Native Americans used only 9 North American Indians, all from the tiny Papago tribe in Arizona. Most of the Indians were from South America. No study will touch an Indian with admixture, although it is likely all Indians have some degree of admixture, at least in North America, even the reservation-born and bred Navajos, considered the "purest" (as much as 20% by one measure).
In every other population of the world except those in the New World, greater diversity equals source. Thus, geneticists established the "out of Africa" theory because Africa has the most genetic diversity.
But does it? Actually, the Americas have more. Rather than pointing to the source of migrations, the gradual increase in frequency of the 678 markers as we get closer to the Bering Strait could reflect a decrease in diversity as a result of genetic drift the farther removed populations became from a center situated, say, in Central America. The same phenomenon occurs on the fringes of the Atlantic, where one particular genetic type, the male lineage known as the Atlantic Modal Haplotype, reaches frequencies of over 80% in Connaught, Ireland. It did not originate in Ireland, though, but rather in Basque lands, which have a high amount of diversity, like Africa.
Geneticists set great store by a concept known as time to coalescence. This is a backtracking calculation of the age of a population according to how many mutations it has accumulated, usually in its mitochondrial DNA. Wind back the mitochondrial clock and you get to zero hour. Nothing is wrong with this approach, but the geneticists go further and set the time together with theoretical migrations to arrive at a source -- say Lake Baikhal in central Siberia. So they use theoretical migrations to prove theoretical migrations. For Native Americans, supposing even that they had one central origin, it could just as well have been in Panama. But for geneticists, it must be in Siberia or Mongolia because that is the only place it is allowed to be.
The search for one single source is illusory and reductionist anyway. Who would suggest that all Europeans came, say, from Tajikistan, 40,000 years ago.
Rather than keep attempting to reiterate Native Americans' lack of diversity, a colonial attitude with blinkers to begin with, geneticists should study how and why Native American diversity far exceeds that of the Europeans, Africans, Asians and all other world populations.
--Donald N. Yates
Principal Investigator
DNA Consulting
New Book Explores DNA Profiling
In Genetic Witness: Science, Law, and Controversy in the Making of DNA Profiling, author Jay D. Aronson uncovers some of the dirty little secrets of forensics. When DNA profiling was first introduced into the American legal system in 1987, it was heralded as a technology that would revolutionize law enforcement. As an investigative tool, it has lived up to much of this hype—it is regularly used to track down unknown criminals, put murderers and rapists behind bars, and exonerate the innocent.
Yet, this promise took ten turbulent years to be fulfilled. Aronson uncovers the dramatic early history of DNA profiling that has been obscured by the technique’s recent success. He demonstrates that robust quality control and quality assurance measures were initially nonexistent, interpretation of test results was based more on assumption than empirical evidence, and the technique was susceptible to error at every stage. Most of these issues came to light only through defense challenges to what prosecutors claimed to be an infallible technology. Although this process was fraught with controversy, inefficiency, and personal antagonism, the quality of DNA evidence improved dramatically as a result. Aronson argues, however, that the dream of a perfect identification technology remains unrealized.
Praise for Genetic Witness
“Thorough and detailed, Aronson’s work will be the definitive treatment of the recent history of DNA typing.”—Simon Cole, author of Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification
About the Author
Jay D. Aronson is an assistant professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Buy from Rutgers University Press.
Was Your Grandmother Named Persis?
According to the blog Gene Expression, there was a strong tendency for new Persian converts and their offspring to use very Arabic names during the first centuries, specifically ones associated with early Muslims. While Arab Muslims themselves might on occasion have had names which might also have been used by Jews or Christians (e.g., Arabic forms of David), Persian converts were underrepresented in these "ambiguous" variants, rather their names signified that they had to be Muslim. But as the proportion of Iran's population which was Muslim increased (going from minority to majority sometime in the 10th century), there was a modest bounce back of pre-Islamic Persian names among the elites. The argument goes that only with the indigenization of Islam within Persian culture were Iranian forms and elements allowed to make an explicit come back, since they no longer posed any threat as an alternative . . . . This of course neglects the elephant in the room that the early Caliphs seem to have transplanted Sassanian court motifs in toto to generate the aura around their monarchy. . . .
Some reviews of Nicholas Wade’s Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
By far the best book I have ever read on humanity's deep history.
--E. O. Wilson
Tracing the history and the evolution of the human race from our common ancestor with chimpanzees 5 million years ago in a 300 page book was an ambitious undertaking, but Wade was clearly up to the task. If you are interested in human evolution and the history of mankind, this book is required reading.
--Searching for the Truth
....brings together a selection of early results [from genetics] to tell the story of modern man, homo sapiens sapiens. We have known a good deal about this topic for decades, from investigations in archeology, anthropology, and comparative linguistics. However, our new, detailed knowledge of the human genome has clarified our understanding dramatically. A good analogy would be the results sent back by the first interplanetary probes, resolving what for centuries had been mere points of light or fuzzy blobs in our telescopes into actual landscapes of craters, volcanoes, and dunes, while at the same time demolishing wishful-thinking fantasies [like those about Martian canals].
--National Review Online
More informative than Nature via Nurture, more readable than The Blank Slate, and proves (contra The Emperor's New Clothes) that popularizations of population genetics don't have to be deceitful and revolting.
--Bookosphere
Wade's coverage includes the ancient near extinction of humanity (DNA analysis shows at one point there were only 5000 humans left after a mass die off), human migration, and intra-human relations between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. He also talks about the idea of race and the violent warmaking nature of human society.
--World History Blog
While 'race' is often a dirty word in science, one of the book's best chapters shows how racial differences can be marked genetically and why this is important, not least for the treatment of diseases.
--Publishers Weekly
And finally, a big slam from Wade’s former employer Nature magazine!
Wade's explanations commit various well-known errors, such as equating correlation with causation and extrapolating from individual traits to group characteristics.... Most of the scenarios he reports have not been rigorously tested, nor is it clear how they could be. The book has many internal inconsistencies, and one can easily find contrary evidence or readily construct alternative 'just so' stories that invoke the same genetic scenario and the same kind of reasoning.... Wade claims example after example of 'genes for' traits.
Read original review in Nature.
New genetic evidence supports isolation and drift in the Ladin communities of the South Tyrolean Alps but not an ancient origin in the Middle East
European Journal of Human Genetics (2008) 16, 124–134
By Mark G Thomas et al.
The Alps are one of the most significant geographical barriers in Europe and several isolated Swiss and Italian valleys retain the distinctive Ladin and Romansch languages, alongside the modern majority of Italian and German languages. Linguistically, Ladin belongs to the Romance languages, but some studies on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation have suggested a major Middle Eastern component to their genealogical origin. Furthermore, an observed high degree of within-population diversity has been interpreted as reflecting long-standing differentiation from other European populations and the absence of a major bottleneck in Ladin population history. To explore these issues further, we examined Y chromosome and mtDNA variation in two samples of Ladin speakers, two samples of German speakers and one sample of metropolitan Italian speakers. Our results (1) indicate reduced diversity in the Ladin-speaking and isolated German-speaking populations when compared to a sample of metropolitan Italian speakers, (2) fail to identify haplotypes that are rare in other European populations that other researchers have identified, and (3) indicate different Middle Eastern components to Ladin ancestry in different localities. These new results, in combination with Bayesian estimation of demographic parameters of interest (population size, population growth rate, and Palaeolithic/Neolithic admixture proportions) and phylogeographic analysis, suggest that the Ladin groups under study are small genetically isolated populations (subject to strong genetic drift), having a predominantly European ancestry, and in one locality, may have a greater Palaeolithic component to that ancestry than their neighbours.
The impact of genetics and genomics on public health
By Angela Brand et al.
European Journal of Human Genetics (2008) 16, 5–13
Public health practice has to date concerned itself with environmental or social determinants of health and disease and has paid scant attention to genomic variations within the population. The advances brought about by genomics are changing these perceptions. In the long run, this knowledge will enable health promotion messages and disease prevention programmes to be specifically directed at susceptible individuals and families, or at subgroups of the population, based on their genomic risk profile. As the controversial discourse in science and health politics shows, the integration of genomics into public health research, policy and practice is one of the major challenges that our health-care system is currently facing.
Hominid Harems: Big Males, Small Females and Bodybuilding
By Ann Gibbons
From Science magazine
A study on page 1443 of the November 30 (2007) issue of Science finds that the males of an extinct species of hominid in South Africa took longer to grow up than females and got much larger, suggesting that top males of this australopithecine species invested energy in bodybuilding in order to possess a harem of females, much like silverback gorillas do today.