As this report in the MIT Technology Review states, “researchers announced yet another version of the human genome map, which combines the DNA of 47 diverse individuals—Africans, Native Americans, and Asians, among other groups—into one giant genetic atlas that they say better captures the surprising genetic diversity of our species.”
The “pangenome,” as the new map is called, is the latest in a long line of human genome mapping projects. Reportedly, it “has been a decade in the making, and researchers say it will only get bigger, creating an expanding view of the genome as they add DNA from another 300 people from around the globe.”
The significance of this project stems from the fact that it provides a more diversified map of the human genome than previous versions:
“People’s genomes are largely alike, but it’s the hundreds of thousands of differences, often just single DNA letters, that explain why each of us is unique. The new pangenome, researchers say, should make it possible to observe this diversity in more detail than ever before, highlighting so-called evolutionary hot spots as well as thousands of surprisingly large differences, like deleted, inverted, or duplicated genes, that aren’t observable in conventional studies.”
Read the full report here.
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