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Monday, November 19, 2007

Genetically Speaking All Races Are Equal

 
That's what the genetics expert, Crystal, told us in her video [Crystal Tells Us about the Human Genome] ...
Now, surprisingly enough, genetically speaking all races are equal. As a matter of fact, if you took a random sample of someone's DNA, just by looking at it you could not tell whether they were African-American, Caucasian, Asian or any other race.
I guess Crystal forgot to tell Price et al. (2007) because this is what they say in the abstract of the paper they just published in PLoS Genetics ...
European Americans are often treated as a homogeneous group, but in fact form a structured population due to historical immigration of diverse source populations. Discerning the ancestry of European Americans genotyped in association studies is important in order to prevent false positive or negative associations due to population stratification and to identify genetic variants whose contribution to disease risk differs across European ancestries. Here, we investigate empirical patterns of population structure in European Americans, analyzing 4,198 samples from four genome-wide association studies to show that components roughly corresponding to northwest European, southeast European and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are the main sources of European American population structure. Building on this insight, we constructed a panel of 300 validated markers that are highly informative for distinguishing these ancestries. We demonstrate that this panel of markers can be used to correct for stratification in association studies that do not generate dense genotype data.
So, not only can we distinguish Caucasians from Africans and Asians, we can also sort out different groups within Caucasians.

Isn't it amazing that scientists can do this when there's no genetic differences between races?


Price, V. et al. (2007) Discerning the ancestry of European Americans in genetic association studies. PLoS Genet. In press. [doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030236.eor]

15 comments :

Anonymous said...

if you took a random sample of someone's DNA, just by looking at it you could not tell whether they were African-American, Caucasian, Asian or any other race.

Did they get their results just by looking at the DNA?

I think not!

Crystal 1 - 0 Larry

NickM said...

Different || "not equal".

Crystal 2 - Larry 0

Timothy V Reeves said...

Frankly Larry who gives a damn about the genetic facts: In as much as the camera gave us frames starting a few inches above the naval, political correctness was imbued with fresh authority.

Harriet said...

Race: that depends on what is meant by it.

Visually, it might be difficult to tell the difference between, say, an Australian aboriginal and someone from Africa (both are dark races) but it would be easy to do so by genetics.

Here is another factor: genetically speaking, someone of Ethiopian ancestry is not that close, genetically speaking, to say a west African, but both would be viewed as being "Black" in popular culture.

So my guess is that Crystal was using "race" in the "popular" sense.

Of course there are genetic difference between groups of people; we don't check Swedes for sickle cells, do we?

A. Vargas said...

Though a given gene can indeed characterize "originary" populations, simple possesion of the gene probably will not always correspond to a phenotype.

In morphology, we can certainly identify traits that characterize races, but of course "mixed" people exist that cannot be adscribed to any "race" with any certainty. I am sure the same counts for gene mixtures; we may find genetic "components" but not a defined phenotype.

Genetic differences between different african populations are far greater than the differences between all the non-african races. For anyone with respect for degree and quantification, a strictly genetic classification would indeed require a relativization of the notions of race.

Africa is much more than just another deme. It's where the basalmost splits occurred.

A. Vargas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
A. Vargas said...

Sickle cell is a good example. Just having sickle-cell disease does not mean you will be "black", even if it is more frequent in that race. It shows up in other races, too.

By the way, somebody correct me if I am wrong, but I understand it is the ethiopians who are in fact more closely related to the non-african races than to other populations of africa. This would call for a reconsideration of notions of race, to define a group that include some "black" and all "white" populations.

Anonymous said...

Relative to blacks in North America, it should be pointed out that many, if not most of them, have Caucasian ancestry in their background because of depredations by slave owners (e.g. Thomas Jefferson fathering one or more children by Sally Jennings). Therefore, the notion of race becomes rather murky for this population.

Ned Ludd said...

There is this British documentary about what is meant by "being English". It looks at peoples' DNA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkQHYIjEWOU&feature=related

Apparently this is a program from Channel 4, "100% English".

Anonymous said...

Eric Turkheimer, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia
http://www.cato-unbound.org/wp-print.php?p=615

"I contend that:

1. The important questions about the role of genetics in the explanation of racial differences in ability are not empirical, but theoretical and philosophical, and,
2. When the theoretical questions are properly understood, proponents of race science, while entitled to their freedom of inquiry and expression, deserve the vigorous disapprobation they often receive. ...

If the question of African IQ is a matter of empirical science, exactly what piece of evidence are we waiting for? What would finally convince the racialists that they are wrong? Nothing, it seems to me, except the arrival of the day when the IQ gap disappears, and that is going to take a while. The history of Africans in the modern West is roughly as follows: Millennia of minding their own business in Africa, followed by 200 years of enslavement by a foreign civilization, followed by 100 years of Jim Crow oppression, followed by fifty years of very incomplete equality and freedom. And now the scientific establishment, apparently even the progressive scientific establishment, is impatient enough with Africans’ social development that it seems reasonable to ask whether the problem is in the descendants of our former slaves’ genes. If that isn’t offensive I don’t know what is."

Anonymous said...

If you look at an INDIVIDUAL persons DNA, you cannot tell with certainty what race they are. You can, however, separate European ancestries into groups because their are certain alleles common to each population.

Larry Moran said...

anonymous says,

If you look at an INDIVIDUAL persons DNA, you cannot tell with certainty what race they are.

Nothing in science is "certain" but if you look at enough DNA, and the individual's ancestors all belong to the same group, then there's a very high probability that you can identify that group.

As a matter of fact, you can usually tell just by looking at the individual whether their ancestors came from Africa, Europe, or Asia so it's not surprising that the genes will also identify those groups.

Are you one of those people who sometimes get confused about whether an individual might be from Ireland or China? :-)

Sanaipei Tande said...

You are really wrong. I think you are white, coz it is a common practice by your kind to classify someone by just skin color. If you paid keen attention, and not look through your ignorant lens, you would notice the difference. The facial features of an aborigine are different from those of people in sub-Saharan Africa. Even their hair texture is different. How well do you know Africa anyway, for you to say such things. Speak about your kind, don't go around making generalizations without concrete proof.

Sanaipei Tande said...

This is such a lie, I am Ethiopian and I look nothing like "other non-african races". Who wanted you to be related with "the populations" in Africa. Go on ahead and stay with your kind till kingdom come, it won't add or subtract life from earth. Ignorant person.

Larry Moran said...

Legally, morally, and ethically, all races should be treated equally.

Genetically they are different. Crystal says that all races are "equal" and the next sentence says, "As a matter of fact, if you took a random sample of someone's DNA, just by looking at it you could not tell whether they were African-American, Caucasian, Asian or any other race." She's dead wrong about that.

It sure looks to me like she's confused about the difference between "equal" and "genetically indistinguishable."