Beyond bones & stones
The Pritchard lab has put up an awesome new interface to query the data from the Human Genome Diversity Project, the HDGP Selection Browser. This is browser is phenomenal. You may have known about a previous iteration, Haplotter, also made by the Pritchard lab, which isn't too user friendly and restricted to only data from... Continue Reading →
We know that during the Sui dynasty, the Chinese empire had European residents. But what can be said about the diversity of China during a preceding dynasty, such as Qin Shi Huang's empire -- the Qin dynasty of China? A team of Chinese academics have analyzed the mtDNA of 19 individuals excavated from a nearby... Continue Reading →
Scientific American has a news piece explaining the implications of one of the new studies on the human genome that I reported on last week. In a nutshell, the news piece explains how the identification of 250 new regions throughout the genome impacts the current human reference genome... raising concerns that reference genome may be... Continue Reading →
One more from Molecular Biology and Evolution, this time investigating whether or not diversity seen in 280 bases of mtDNA from 886 people from 27 indigenous Americans is localized amongst populations. Or in other words, is the diversity seen in this short segment of mtDNA random or unique to groups? The paper, "Native South American... Continue Reading →
In light of a discussion between Razib and Martin, I recently took arms and battled the concepts behind race and identity and how human genetic variation plays a role in forming these concepts. In the comments, I was disgusted to read Martin throw in this rhetorical line in his comment, "Genetics have long ago shown... Continue Reading →
Right on the coat tails of Jon's post on discussing race comes an interview with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a really distinguished and now emeritus population geneticist from Stanford, in Nature News. His work has been very controversial because he has consistently resisted the notion that ‘race’ has any useful biological meaning. His work has been... Continue Reading →
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