Genographic Project
The Genographic Project aims to map historical human migration patterns by collecting and analyzing DNA samples from over 100,000 people across five continents. Field researchers will collect DNA samples from indigenous populations but uniquely the project will also allow for public participation. For approximately US$100 someone anywhere in the world can order a self-testing kit. They send a mouth scraping away which will be analyzed and their DNA information will be placed on an Internet accessible database. The process will be completely anonymous and will not test for any genetic traits. Instead markers on Mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomes will be used to trace distant ancestry.
The $40m project is a privately-funded collaboration between National Geographic, IBM and the Waitt Family Foundation.
Prominent team members are:
- Spencer Wells, Team leader and moving force (National Geographic scientist)
- Himla Soodyall, principal project investigator, Sub-Saharan Africa
- Ajay Royyuru, head of computational biology, IBM
This work in analogous to that of Professor Bryan Sykes, who pioneered the usage of mitochondrial DNA to trace lineages. Sykes documented his work in The Seven Daughters of Eve.
The project has drawn comparison with the failed Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) from the 1990s, which ended after controversy over the patenting of the DNA of indigenous peoples. The Genographic Project leaders have said that they will make the information from their project public and will not patent genes, though have not specified their licensing guidelines. A number of the key members of the Genographic Project were key members of the HGDP as well; the Advisory Board, for example, is chaired by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, the geneticist who originally proposed the HGDP.[1]
Shortly after the announcement of the project in April 2005, the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism released a statement protesting the project, its connections with the HGDP, and called for a boycott of IBM, Gateway Computers, and National Geographic.
See also
- anthropometry
- archaeology
- genetics
- genetic diversity
- linguistics
- Y chromosome
- Mitochondrial Eve
- Y-chromosomal Adam