Would someone please tell me why diversity of genes is
superior?

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
..


"Perry Neheum" <perryneheum@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d747fe75-cac7-4087-aaef-37299753aedb@h11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
"Africans Have World's Highest Genetic Diversity, Study
Finds"

By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 1, 2009


Africans are more genetically diverse than the inhabitants
of the rest
of the world combined, according to a sweeping study that
carried
researchers into remote regions to sample the bloodlines of
more than
100 distinct populations.

The report, published yesterday in the journal Science
Express,
suggests that, because of historical migrations and genetic
mixing
across the continent, it will be hard for African Americans
to trace
their ancestry in fine detail. African American genealogies
are
increasingly popular and commercialized, but the authors of
the new
study cast doubt on how precise such searches can be, given
the
complexity of the genetic makeup of Africans.

"It may be very challenging to trace back ancestry to
particular
tribes or ethnic groups," said Sarah Tishkoff, a University
of
Pennsylvania geneticist who led the international research
team.

The first anatomically modern humans originated in Africa
about
200,000 years ago, and all humans today are their direct
descendants.
The study points to an area along the Namibia-South Africa
border, the
homeland of the San people, as the starting point for a
southwest-to-
northeast migratory route that carried people through Africa
and
across the Red Sea into Eurasia.

Tishkoff said the new findings will help medical researchers
tailor
drug treatments for different groups of Africans rather than
treating
them as homogenous.

"This is an absolute landmark. It's incredible," said Alison
Brooks, a
professor of anthropology and international affairs at
George
Washington University. "It's the most comprehensive document
ever
published describing the very complex issue of African
genetic
variation." She added, "There's been so much genetic
analysis that's
been so Eurocentric."

Tishkoff, who until last year was a professor at the
University of
Maryland, did much of her fieldwork in remote areas
reachable only
with four-wheel-drive vehicles. She had to haul centrifuges,
for
processing blood samples, into villages without electricity,
often
running her devices by connecting them to her car battery.

"Some people had never seen a fair-skinned person before,"
Tishkoff
said. "Many of these groups have been studied by linguists
and
anthropologists, and we've known nothing about their genetic
history.
Until now."

One of her collaborators, Muntaser Ibrahim of the University
of
Khartoum, said indigenous people were eager to help the
research.
"They would like to know about their past as much as
everybody else,"
he said. "The notion that people in remote areas are not
interested in
genetics is not true."

Although the study's main focus was on Africa, Tishkoff and
her
colleagues studied DNA markers from around the planet,
identifying 14
"ancestral clusters" for all of humanity. Nine of those
clusters are
in Africa. "You're seeing more diversity in one continent
than across
the globe," Tishkoff said.

Her team looked at 98 African Americans from North Carolina,
Baltimore, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The researchers
determined that, on
average, 71 percent of their genes could be traced to the
far-flung
African linguistic group Niger-Kordofanian, 8 percent to
other African
groups and 13 percent to Europe, with a smattering of
genetic markers
pointing to other places on the globe.

But the percentages vary widely from individual to
individual. In a
conference call with reporters, Tishkoff said the 13 percent
figure
for European genetic markers may be a slight underestimate;
other
studies have found numbers closer to 20 percent.

Her findings provide a kind of caveat to the increasingly
popular gene-
based genealogical searches among African Americans.
Tishkoff studied
very short snippets of nuclear DNA; some commercial research
companies
focus only on the Y chromosome or on a type of DNA known as
mitochondrial DNA. These latter techniques can offer a kind
of thread
into the past to a single ancestor, rather than to the full
complement
of ancestors.

"There is no relevance to what we do at African Ancestry,"
said Rick
Kittles, scientific director of that company. "We do not use
nuclear
markers like Sarah did in this study."

Brooks, of George Washington University, said the report
will help
resolve academic debates among archeologists and linguists:
"The study
shows that single sources of data, whether from archaeology,
oral
history, genetics or linguistic similarity, are not
sufficient to
understand the complex history of an African region -- one
can be
transmitted without the others, and each has a different
story to tell
about the past."

"Buckaroo Banzai" <blisteringlogic@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ShOKl.28963$YU2.14998@nlpi066.nbdc.sbc.com...
> No offense, but why are Africans the most down-trodden,
> extermination-prone, starvation-plagued people on the planet? I mean the
> only people that have it worse than Africans are North Koreans... yikes!
=====
Genetic differences and genetic superiority are two totally different
things. Negroes range in size from pigmys to seven-foot basketball stars.
Some are built like a refrigerator and are suited for football. Not too
many are like Einstein and capable of scientific abilities.
Their diversity is physical, not mental. Mentally they are generally pretty
much the same as other Negroes.