Here and Now: Spencer Wells and the Genographic Project
"Okay, open your mouth and say 'Ahhhhh!'" One swab of saliva at a time, Spencer Wells is collecting a DNA database to help trace human origins to the continent of Africa tens of thousands of years ago.
Wells is one of those whiz kids who graduated high school at the age of 16. He later obtained his PhD from Harvard and studied under Luca Cavalli-Sforza at Stanford's School of Medicine. Cavalli-Sforza is considered by many to be the "father of anthropological genetics."
Wells is studying genomic diversity in indigenous populations in the hope of unraveling age-old mysteries about early human migration.
Here's a link to the Genographic
Project.
Submit your comments or questions below. The shorter the question, the more likely we will use it. Also, if your submission doesn't appear right away--we moderate it--to keep spammers from filling our web pages with obnoxious entries.
Posted by
Paul Atkinson - Here and Now Producer at
11:00
|
Comments (10)
From current research, what region of Africa is the orgin of the migration?
What updates to the original Genographic Project results would you make today?
What recent genetic research result gave you a WOW moment?
is it possible to contribute DNA to this project, and if so, how? if so, is it possible to find out where my ancestors came from?
If I understand correctly how evolution works, a person may be born with a genetic mutation that provides a benefit. If that benefit makes that person survive better than people without the benefit, the mutation becomes more prevalent in the population in future generations. Using that model, how would you explain lighter skin color and other traits such as straighter hair, especially in the space of about two and a half thousand generations (based on about 60,000 years since the start of the migration you talked about, less five thousand years since the beginning of recorded history; and assuming a reproductive cycle for each human starting at age 20)?
In some cases, like the T1 (female) mitochondrial DNA, some of the cumulative results are still sketchy. When do you expect to get more detail on the results?
If the family has the mitochondrial DNA for our family, how different can the male DNA be?
Is there a possibillity that humans evolved in more than one place?
Is there a possibillity that Africa is not the origin of humans?
Going back only six generations on my fathers side I have 32 ancestors (16 if counting only the males). Exactly which of these would be traced with the DNA test?
Is there any research that would benefit those with genetic illnesses?
are we going to evolve to have very very long legs in twenty million years? Because my friend said so and it is because of evolution.
