[Genome] human genetic diversity data

[Rachel Harte]

Hello Janina,

This is a very interesting question. I have lots of suggestions of 
information sources for you from someone in the Genome Browser group and
also from one of the postdocs here. I have put together their suggestions 
for you below.

Population genetic diversity has no allegiances to political countries.
Further there is absolutely no data on a country by country basis. It was 
suggested that you should start by reading the work of Luca Cavalli-Sforza 
or Richard Lewontin. This will help you to develop an idea of what is 
meant by genetic diversity and how it is measured. Then you could move on 
to exploring the other references below.

LINKS:

Luca Cavalli-Sforza, an Emeritus Professor of Genetics from Stanford, has
done a lot of research in this area.  He started around 50 years ago 
trying to understand human populations using linguistics and blood typing,
and moved into genetic markers when that became possible.  Peter Underhill
is now carrying on the tradition of his lab.
http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/Luigi_Cavalli-Sforza/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Luca_Cavalli-Sforza
http://hpgl.stanford.edu/index.html

Spencer Wells also worked with Luca Cavalli-Sforza (as well as Richard
Lewontin at Harvard) and there was a National Geographic documentary in
2002 documenting his work:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/emerging/spencerWells.html

Michael Hammer from Univ. of Arizona:
http://lifescience.arizona.edu/faculty.php?faculty_id=2891
http://hammerlab.biosci.arizona.edu/

Genetic Variation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation

Haplogroup link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup

Haplogroups are about ancestry, not diversity.
Most (90%) of the diversity is within a population, not between
populations. Africans are far more diverse than any other group. Europeans 
may have some of the least diversity.

ARTICLES:

Noah A. Rosenberg et al.  "Genetic Structure of Human Populations"
Science 298:2381-2385 (2002).

Sarah A. Tishkoff and Brian C. Verrelli
"Patterns of Human Genetic Diversity: Implications for Human Evolutionary
History and Disease". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 
4:293-340 (2003).

Haplogroups article:
Garrigan D, Hammer MF
Reconstructing human origins in the genomic era.
Nat Rev Genet. 2006 Sep;7(9):669-80.

BOOKS:

"Human Diversity" by Richard Lewontin 1995 (I think he's at
Harvard).
Books by Jonathan Marks.
"Before the Dawn" by Nicholas Wade

I hope that this is helpful to you.

Rachel

On Tue, 24 Oct 2006, Janina Matuszeski wrote:

> Hello,
>
> My appologies for posting a highly non-technical question.  Through a
> friend, I contacted Gill Bejerano, who suggested I email this list.
>
> I'm an economics graduate student at Harvard University and I'm trying to
> learn if there is data available on human genetic diversity.  Specifically,
> I am looking for a measure of the overall genetic diversity of the
> population of each country in the world, either today or during a historical
> time period such as 1500AD.  Do you know of data along these lines or anyone
> that I could contact to learn more about what is available?  Any suggestions
> you have would be great!
>
> Many thanks,
> Janina
>
>
> -----------------------------
> Janina Matuszeski
> PhD Candidate in Economics
> Harvard University
> matuszes at fas.harvard.edu
> (617) 312-3562
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Genome maillist  -  Genome at soe.ucsc.edu
> http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genome
>

-- 
Rachel Harte
UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group
http://genome.ucsc.edu