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Reading history through genetics
Date:12/5/2012

d genetically isolated while their population has expanded rapidly to several millions today.

"Knowing that the Ashkenazi population has expanded so recently from a very small number has practical implications," notes Pe'er. "If we can obtain data on only a few hundreds of individuals from this population, a perfectly feasible task in today's technology, we will have effectively collected the genomes of millions of current Ashkenazim." He and his team are now doing just that, and have already begun to analyze a first group of about 150 Ashkenazi genomes.

The genetic data of the Masai, a semi-nomadic people, indicates the village-by-village structure of their population. Unlike the isolated Ashkenazi group, the Masai live in small villages but regularly interact and intermarry across village boundaries. The ancestors of each village therefore typically come from many different places, and a single village hosts an effective gene pool that is much larger than the village itself.

Previous work in population genetics was focused on mutations that occurred very long ago, say the researchers, and therefore able to only describe population changes that occurred at that timescale, typically before the agricultural revolution. Pe'er's research has changed that, enabling scientists to learn more about recent changes in populations and start to figure out, for instance, how to pinpoint severe mutations in personal genomes of specific individualsmutations that are more likely to be associated with disease.

"This is a thrilling time to be working in computational genetics," adds Pe'er, citing the speed in which data acquisition has been accelerating; much faster than the ability of computing hardware to process such data. "While the deluge of big data has forced us to develop better algorithms to analyze them, it has also rewarded us with unprecedented levels of understanding."


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Contact: Holly Evarts
holly.evarts@columbia.edu
347-453-7408
Columbia University
Source:Eurekalert

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