The Euro obsession with race has obscured the fact that humans are one species with a lot of regional diversity resulting from migrations out of Africa over the last 100.000 years. BUT .. what about diversity IN AFRICA?

A report issued at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics announced that genome sequences from across more than a dozen African countries and 426 African people have now been acquired.  More than 3 million genetic variations were found that have not been seen in European genomes. The most exciting are linked to infectious disease and viral infection.  

This is likely just the beginning. As Dr. Hanchard’s biography states, we have lots of reasons to believe that genetics plays a huge role in the outcomes of longstanding diseases in Africa .. from sickle, to TB to malnutrition.

The promise of this work is immense not only for Africans but for all humans.  The scientific session where the work was presented was headed by Kiran Musunuru, an exciting young associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Musunuru’s work is my field, that is cardiovascular disease.  He crosses disciplines ranging from the sort of population genetics described by Neal Hanchard to stem cell biology and the use of genome editing to correct genetic errors.

Gene editing  is not likely to come to Africa soon but Hanchard’s work illustrates why data from the wonderful, ancient African genome is important for us all as a way of identifying the sites in the genome where genome therapy or new drugs may be effective for all humans.

Kiran Musunuru

There is one more reason why I found this study exciting.  Reading the comments by Dr. Musunuru about the genetics of Africa made me curious about his own work.  I looked him up in Medline* and discovered that Kiran Mususnuru is an outstanding scientist.. But the name “Mususnuru” itself intrigued me.

I had, correctly, assumed that Neal Hanchard was of African ancestry based on interts and appearnce.  From his appearance I had first assumed that Dr. Mususnuru was also of African or African American ancestry.  I did not find any information on his family on the web but after I researched the name I now assume Dr. Mususnuru’s ancestors must have come from the province of India with the same name on the west coast of India. Thousands or tens of thousands years ago, the emigrants from Africa must have passed through what is now the “Musunuru” mandal (subdistrict) in the Krishna district of the state of Andhra Pradesh.  Assuming my assumption about his name  is correct, it is hard to not imagine that Kiran Masunuru is now using Dr. Hanchard’s data to look at the ancient African  origins of his own family. It would be amazing if some of these genes were not represented in genetic loci that explain heritability of cardiovascular and other diseases in India.

Click the image for the story of Indian genetics.

India has also begun a genomics study. 

This paper may be as important as Genesis in telling us the origins of humanity and giving us new tools that benefit all humans.

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