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"People of African descent" have the highest genetic diversity among all human subgroups. Isn't that a truism? All humans are of African descent.

by krona 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Jaruzel 6y ago
I am NOT approaching this from any kind of racial stereotyping, but merely from a genetic point of view, but reading the article I had the same thought. I had previously understood, that native domestic sub-Saharan Africans (i.e. those living on the continent, with clear African based heritage) did not have any Neanderthal DNA, as Neanderthals were further down the evolutionary line of the first emigration out of Africa, and were primarily European based. Therefore those with purely African genetic history would never had interbred with them. Is this still true, or have I been walking around with a massive misunderstanding here? As a footnote, We need to still be able to ask these questions without being afraid of the racism response. We are all different, we should embrace that and not let it affect scientific discussion or discovery.
- mkl 6y ago
  As is usually the case, reality is to messy for simple explanations like this to be completely correct. Europe and Africa are pretty close, so there has been a lot of migration to and fro, some of it bringing Neanderthal DNA into Africa: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/africans-carry-surprising-amount-neanderthal-dna https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/africans-carry-surpr...
  - NotableAlamode 6y ago
    From the quoted article: - "modern Europeans and East Asians apparently inherited about 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals" - "African individuals on average had [...] more Neanderthal DNA than previously thought—about [...] 0.3% of their genome." So the article seems to confirm a 10x difference in Neanderthals DNA, which might be significant. It's also unclear what they mean by "Africans, did the same include, e.g. Egyptians of Greek descent?
  - datameta 6y ago
    Fascinating revelation. What still puzzles me is how Asian populations have a slightly higher average proportion of Neanderthal DNA when their range was predominantly over the European part of Eurasia.
mkl 6y ago
This isn't quite comparing the right groups. The comparison is of the people within Africa and the people outside Africa: "Africans are more genetically diverse than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined" - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043002485.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/0..., which seems to be referring to this: https://faculty.washington.edu/wjs18/Pop_Structure/TishkoffAfrican.pdf https://faculty.washington.edu/wjs18/Pop_Structure/TishkoffA... Some more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation

"People of African descent" have the highest genetic diversity among all human subgroups. Isn't that a truism? All humans are of African descent.

by krona 6y ago

"People of African descent" have the highest genetic diversity among all human subgroups. Isn't that a truism? All humans are of African descent.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Jaruzel 6y ago

I am NOT approaching this from any kind of racial stereotyping, but merely from a genetic point of view, but reading the article I had the same thought. I had previously understood, that native domestic sub-Saharan Africans (i.e. those living on the continent, with clear African based heritage) did not have any Neanderthal DNA, as Neanderthals were further down the evolutionary line of the first emigration out of Africa, and were primarily European based. Therefore those with purely African genetic history would never had interbred with them. Is this still true, or have I been walking around with a massive misunderstanding here? As a footnote, We need to still be able to ask these questions without being afraid of the racism response. We are all different, we should embrace that and not let it affect scientific discussion or discovery.

mkl 6y ago
As is usually the case, reality is to messy for simple explanations like this to be completely correct. Europe and Africa are pretty close, so there has been a lot of migration to and fro, some of it bringing Neanderthal DNA into Africa: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/africans-carry-surprising-amount-neanderthal-dna https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/africans-carry-surpr...
- NotableAlamode 6y ago
  From the quoted article: - "modern Europeans and East Asians apparently inherited about 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals" - "African individuals on average had [...] more Neanderthal DNA than previously thought—about [...] 0.3% of their genome." So the article seems to confirm a 10x difference in Neanderthals DNA, which might be significant. It's also unclear what they mean by "Africans, did the same include, e.g. Egyptians of Greek descent?
- datameta 6y ago
  Fascinating revelation. What still puzzles me is how Asian populations have a slightly higher average proportion of Neanderthal DNA when their range was predominantly over the European part of Eurasia.

mkl 6y ago

This isn't quite comparing the right groups. The comparison is of the people within Africa and the people outside Africa: "Africans are more genetically diverse than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined" - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043002485.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/0..., which seems to be referring to this: https://faculty.washington.edu/wjs18/Pop_Structure/TishkoffAfrican.pdf https://faculty.washington.edu/wjs18/Pop_Structure/TishkoffA... Some more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation