Genomics and human diversity

The sequencing of the human genome (2003) has been followed by a number technical developments that allow detailed characterization (including complete sequencing) DNA thousands individuals. This provided an estimate genetic diversity: approx. 3 million base substitutions within our includes 3,000 bases. Although divergence between any two individuals is small, it responsible for much phenotypic diversity observed population, and current techniques make possible to measure distances whose analysed. When results from large sample persons are analysed sophisticated multi-dimensional representation, fairly distinct clusters appear in indicating groups more similar each other than groups. these defined analysis, without priori information on their origin, turns out they largely correspond so-called “ethnic” categories reflect ancestry (e.g. Europeans, Africans Asians). Every group internally quite diverse, but analysis markers does indeed differentiate them. “Race”, as commonly defined, very imperfect proxy groups, suggests high homogeneity group, implies assumptions about behaviour “character” have no scientific basis, heavily tainted past uses support oppression even genocide. Thus “ancestry” or “ancestry group” highly preferable term, especially now people mixed ancestry. These methods widely applied populations “ancient DNA” historical samples, made great strides understanding history species.