Who's your great, great, great granddaddy?
There may come a time, perhaps even within our lifetimes, when treatment for our illnesses will depend upon our very own unique genealogy. At least, that is my take away from a fascinating story about human genomes that is in the news today. The New York Times detailed how scientists have decoded the complete genomes of five individuals from southern Africa. The Africans included four Bushmen hunter-gatherers and one member of the Bantu tribe. None of the Bushmen would likely be known outside of their own communities, but the Bantu individual is very well-known indeed. He is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Archbishop Tutu is said to have been selected because he has a very keen interest in medicine and in the human genome project and he fit the profile that was needed for the research. His parents came from the two largest Bantu groups in South Africa, the Sotho-Tswana and the Nguni. African genomes are of particular interest to scientists because they have more variation in their DNA ...