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One of the motivations for this kind of work is to assist genetic epidemiology, or population-wide genetic studies. Indeed, this is one of the main goals of Glaxo Smith-Kline, which participates in the study, says Novembre. "They are interested in pharmacogenetic purposes to do case control studies of adverse drug reactions," he says.
"The idea is to save money in these large-scale genetic epidemiological studies," says Krawczak. "It's very costly to genotype people." But if you can create genetic control groups for distinct populations, it allows you to more easily test drugs against different populations to see where the benefits lie, he says.
At the moment, the main focus is on Europe because it has a lot of genetic variation but a relatively well defined and delineated history. "It's a nightmare to do population genetics in America," says Krawczak. "There are so many migrant populations from different parts of the world that it's just too complex."
Even so, Novembre says that he plans to extend this sort of research to cover larger parts of the world and individuals of mixed ancestry. "At the moment, if you have mixed grandparent ancestry you appear between the set of countries where the grandparents come from," he says. "So if they are part Italian and part British, they would appear in Switzerland. But we are working on algorithms that will be able to infer grandparent ancestry and get around this."
Eventually, this sort of research is likely to be picked up by the growing number of companies offering DNA home tests over the Internet to people wishing to trace their genealogy. At the moment, these services tend to offer fairly rough pictures of one's origins. But as the microarray technology becomes cheaper and the statistical software used to map it becomes more sophisticated, these kinds of services should greatly improve, Novembre says.
A computer model of epidemiological data from 1.5 million people illuminates the genetic origins of many common diseases.
Very impressed also. I can clearly see that some populations kept to themselves. In much of Europe, especially the northern areas, villages were effectively isolated by huge, thick forests many hundreds if not thousands of years ago. This prevented allot of cross contact and mixing. This ended when locals started to clear an ever increasing amount of land for farming and livestock.
This is interesting, but is it old news? I thought I stumbled upon this some time ago. Anyway, I understand that distance in dot separation represents differences in the genome, however the article or researchers haven't discussed why some countries/cultures, like Italy and Spain, are so separated from the rest of Europe. Does it have to do with natural terrain, differences in language or physical appearance (past racism), or is there some other reason why these countries are separated from the rest?
The obvious explanation for the separation of Italy and Spain is that they are both peninsulas separated by significant mountain ranges (the Alps and Pyrenees, respectively) from the rest of Europe. These would have presented no barriers to coastal traders, of course, but people living in the interior would find communication difficult across these natural barriers.
I'd be more surprised if there were such a thing as a Belgian genome - a country that didn't exist 200 years ago and having no significant barriers with its neighbours.
No there is no explanation to why Italy should be genetically isolated. It was the "center of the world" for thousands of years, and such power centers always attracted large numbers of immigrants. They attracted large invading armies too, which pillaged and raped (literally) the local population.
Fitting data to make up a story
Well, what is rather weird in the whole story is that current political entities (states) are being linked to genetic data. But numerous European states did not even exist 200-300 years ago...and many other states had a different geographical area.
It looks like retroactive story making. You know what the conclusions are, so you just have to fit the data to it.
Geographic factor in the map algorithms
How comes an Italian gene is placed on the map near Italy ?
I mean, there is a parameter that put an italian on the lower right of a french, and an english on its upper side.
So you can't draw theories (like the comment above on the separation of Italy) based on that, since the position are already biased.
Where are the maps, there is only a small thumbnail?
When a story is written accompanying media (video, & picture) must be displayed correctly. I have on many occasions read articles where the pictures or movies failed to play, or were in non-normal formats (like a movie in PDF). Being an owner of a web company, I feel that is not acceptable.
Thanks
Brian
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dtutelman
117 Comments
Well illustrated
My compliments to whoever chose the illustrations for the story. The combination of a genetic map and a political map with matching coloring told me immediately what the experiment was. I was able to read the rest of the article with more interest and more understanding than if the maps were not there.
Thanks,
DaveT
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