Where Did We Come From And How Did We Get To Where We Live Today?

In the first scientific publication from The Genographic Project, a five-year effort to understand the human journey, we see the first attempts to
answer these age-old questions. Reporting their experience of genotyping human mitochondrial DNA from the first 18 months of the project in the
open-access journal PLoS Genetics, Doron Behar and colleagues describe the procedures used to generate, manage and analyze the genetic data from
78,590 public participants. They also provide the first anthropological insights in this unprecedented effort to map humanity's genetic journey
through the ages.



An ongoing debate in the field of human population genetics concerns the accurate classification of genetic lineages into distinct branches on the
human family tree, known as haplogroups. The rigorous genotyping and quality assurance strategies of the work done through The Genographic Project
allow classification of mitochondrial lineages with unprecedented accuracy. This methodology is now being made publicly available along with the
anonymous genetic data itself. As well as making available a periodically-updated database comprising all data donated by participants, the
researchers make available the Nearest Neighbor haplogroup prediction tool.



The Genographic Project was launched in 2005 using genetics as a tool to address anthropological questions on a global scale. At the core of the
project is a consortium of ten scientific teams from around the world united by a uniform ethical and scientific framework who are responsible for
sample collection and analysis in their respective regions. The project allows members of the public to participate in a real-time anthropological
genetics study by purchasing a participation kit from the Genographic website and donating the genetic results to the expanding database:
link here.


Related interview with Spencer Wells:
link here


Related video file: Introductory Video of The Genographic Project
link here (27 MB MOV)


CITATION:

Behar DM, Rosset S, Blue-Smith J, Balanovsky O, Tzur S, et al. (2007)

"The Genographic Project public participation mitochondrial DNA database."

PLoS Genet 3(6): e104. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030104

Link to article.


About PLoS Genetics


PLoS Genetics is a peer reviewed, open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science. PLoS Genetics
reflects the full breadth and interdisciplinary nature of genetics and genomics research by publishing outstanding original contributions in all areas
of biology. Everything we publish is freely available online throughout the world for you to read, download, copy, distribute, and use (with
attribution) in any way. The Public Library of Science uses the Creative Commons Attribution License.

plosgenetics




Public Library of Science

185 Berry Street, Suite 3100

San Francisco, CA 94107

USA