An archbishop and four Bushmen walk into a lab. What emerges is no joke, but a more complete picture of human genetic diversity than ever seen before.
This new study of five Africans has identified more than 1.3 million new human genetic variants and could contribute to a better understanding of the genetic underpinnings of human diseases. The data might also help drug companies devise more effective medications to treat diseases in Africa, where many drugs do not work as well as they do in people of European ancestry, who were the primary test subjects in designing the drugs.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and four Bushmen community leaders from Namibia contributed their DNA for the new study, published in the Feb. 18 Nature. Researchers decoded the complete genetic blueprint of Tutu, who represents the Bantu ethnic group, and of one of the Bushmen, a man named !Gubi (punctuation characters in Bushmen names represent click consonants). The international team of scientists also deciphered the protein-coding portions of the genomes from three other Bushmen, G/aq’o, D#kgao and !Aî.