27 million ancestors
Oxford has created a genealogy of all mankind
Georgy Golovanov, Hi-tech+
Scientists from the Oxford Institute of Big Data have made a big step forward to compiling the pedigree of all mankind. The extensive scheme of genetic connections compiled by them allows us to see in unprecedented detail the common ancestors, the approximate time and place of their habitat, including migration from Africa. The method used by the researchers may be useful in medicine, for example, to determine hereditary risk factors for diseases.
Over the past 20 years, we have seen serious progress in genetic research, the emergence of genetic databases for hundreds of thousands of people, including those who lived in the prehistoric era. All this made it possible to trace the genealogy of people and their family ties among themselves, according to a press release from the University of Oxford researchers create the largest ever human family tree.
Article by Wohns et al. A unified genealogy of modern and ancient genomes is published in the journal Science – VM.
Until now, the main problem of the common genealogy of mankind has been the creation of a single database from a mass of disparate ones, as well as the development of algorithms capable of analyzing this data. The new method, proposed by experts from the University of Oxford, easily combines data from various sources and processes millions of gene sequences.
"In fact, we have built a huge family tree, the genealogy of all mankind, which models as accurately as we can, all the genetic variations that we see in people today," said evolutionary geneticist Won Yan. — This genealogy allows us to see how the genetic sequences of each person are interconnected, according to all elements of the genome".
Since individual sections of the genome are inherited from only one parent, the origin of each element of the genome can be represented as a tree. Several such trees link genetic sites in time with ancestors who first had such gene variants.
In total, the study integrated data from eight databases, 3609 individual genetic sequences from 215 populations. The age of the ancient genomes ranged from 1,000 to 100,000 years. The algorithms calculated the position of the ancestors on the family tree based on the known laws of transmission of genetic information. As a result, almost 27 million ancestors were born.
By adding geographical data, scientists have found out where these people lived, illustrating the evolutionary history of mankind, including migration from Africa.
The authors plan to continue adding genetic data as they become available to make this tool even more effective and useful. According to them, it will easily accommodate millions more genomes.
Interest in genealogy and DNA tests helps criminologists solve crimes. The breakthrough came thanks to cheap and affordable DNA tests, and the popularity of the method began to grow after the discovery of the sensational case of the "Golden State Killer", which operated in the 70-80-ies of the last century in the United States.
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