Mixed roots: Science looks at family trees
Welcome to the 'ancestry industry,' where DNA tests produce family history hints - and profits.
(Page 3 of 3)
Population geneticists agree that modern humans originated in East Africa and began to spread from there only about 60,000 years ago. Over many generations isolated populations "gradually drifted apart in a very early form of speciation," Frudakis says, creating genetic differences. "It's how nature works. It's a very healthy thing. It instills [a healthy] diversity in a population."
Earlier this month, the National Geographic Society and IBM Corp. announced a plan to take 100,000 blood samples from indigenous populations around the world to build an ancestral DNA database. The Genographic Project is expected to take five years and cost $40 million. Part of the cost is expected to be offset by charging interested people $100 to learn about their paternal or maternal lineage using Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA testing. The collected data may help answer questions such as: Did Alexander the Great's army leave behind a genetic trail as it conquered much of the ancient world? Which humans first colonized India? Did Homo sapiens interbreed with Neanderthals or possibly with Homo erectus?
"We see this as the 'moon shot' of anthropology, using genetics to fill in the gaps in our knowledge about the connections and differences that make up the human species," said Spencer Wells, the project leader, in announcing the effort.
At least one group, the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB), has announced its opposition to the research, based on concerns that the data would be misused. The project also conflicts with traditional teachings about ancestral origins, since it promotes the scientific view that all humans originated in east Africa 60,000 to 70,000 years ago.
Dr. Wells, speaking by phone from Delhi, India, where he is promoting the project, says he was surprised by the IPCB's opposition and that a dialogue was under way with the group to address its concerns. The IPCB, he says, was pleased to learn that the project had passed scrutiny by the University of Pennsylvania's Institutional Review Board, which guards the rights of human subjects in clinical trials and addresses other ethical issues involved in scientific research. "We have many ethical and legal safeguards in place to assure that we are in more than full compliance with the law," he adds.
Some biologists and human geneticists not connected with the project say that it will face other ethical and scientific hurdles. "I'm very concerned - not because I think it's a bad idea to study human genetic diversity. I actually think it's a great thing," says Sarah Tishkoff, a biology professor at the University of Maryland who has done extensive research in Africa. "But it has to be thought out extremely carefully." Who will profit from the sale of the ancestry test kits, and will indigenous people be compensated?
"I'm personally very skeptical about what these ancestry kits can tell people," she says. "If this is not done properly in an ethical, careful manner, it can backfire, and it's going to get people very angry and upset and make it very difficult for anybody [else] in the field to do [this kind of] research."
Wells says the quality of the science will be high. "We have 11 leading population geneticists, essentially the best people in the world, engaged as our principal investigators," along with linguists, archaeologists, and other scientists, he says.
