DNA traces African roots

The BBC ran an interesting story yesterday about genetic testing services that cater to African Americans seeking to trace their roots back to specific parts of Africa.

One of the largest companies offering the service is African Ancestry. Their test kits run from $200-300 and, according to the company, can "determine which present-day African country you share ancestry with."

Some scientists, such as University of Texas geneticist Deborah Bolnick, are dubious about the company's claims and say that its genetic databases are too narrow to pinpoint countries of genetic origin.

What do you think? Are African Americans wasting their money by paying for these tests? Can these companies really tell people what region of Africa their ancestors came from using existing technology and databases?

Bob Grant, Associate Editor - The Scientist

PS - If you haven't seen the PBS special "African American Lives" yet, I highly recommend watching it. It covers many high-profile examples of African Americans tracing their genetic heritage.

While Bolnick is inferred as a potential expert on the topic, and her 2007 policy forum paper in Science states that the numbers used by companies are indeed too low, it is never stated how high the numbers should be for optimum determination. To me, as a biologist in a Company that evaluates hundreds of patients in each clinical study, 25,000 seems pretty good. Hence, if 25,000 seems okay to me, one does not need to wonder too hard what someone with little or no scientific background might think about that number.

Is anyone inside or outside the formal science professions actually surprised when parameters such as budgetary limits, shortfalls in application of "absolute rigor," personality issues (as distinguishable from moral character ones) and the ever-present specters of disparate findings of individual judgment and creative interpretation come to play.

Short of BLATANT earmarks of fraud, such as deliberate cooking of one's data, all human judgment and interpretation enjoys (thank goodness) some latitude, else one individual might attain sufficient power over others to enjoy authority and credibility such that his/her judgment or interpretation would be the STANDARD by which the judgment and interpretive authenticity of others is measured. (And, indeed, in many contexts researchers and research services, ARE -- as we know each and all in our heart of hearts, quite often coralled to fit within an agenda or an interpretive model "determined" constrained by the interests or wishes or opinions of underwriters, managerial superiors, or the constraints of a current consensus in our field, even where anomalies abound in the supporting evidence.)

Yes, "scientists" are human, and DO live in the context of a world impacted by parameters OTHER THAN just those of anything resembling total objectivity or completely unbiased or un-influenced thinking. And, yes, "business" is about matching up supply and demand incentives, even where many questions of "science" remain cloudy.

Is there a standard, set by an objective and totally unbiased group of qualified individuals, such as a Certified Finandial Accounting Standards Board, which "determines" how much -- relative to a global geographic gene data base is "enough" for comparison and analysis of where a particular individual's ancestors are likely to have lived? Are historical and geological records exhaustive enough that there are no questions left unasked and unanswered as to origins of certain mutations, and rates of their further mutation as studied (in patterns perceived) over
several centuries, or millenia?

Indeed, how much is "enough" for one's data basis, as agreed by any and all who might have honest doubts?

Perhaps, if there is any valid question we might debate, concerning what is a sufficient amount of information, it is this: How adequate is ANYONE'S statistical sampling of the gene pools of
all populated areas on the globe today. What percentage of ALL the genomes of individual humans has been established? Are we not all tending to assume false accuracy in working with
what is, as yet, a rather lightly sampled phenomenon (the current distribution of genes over the earth, MUCH LESS, how it happened to have arrived at its current configuration?

Perhaps what is needed is a consensus as to how much data is enough FOR PURPOSES OF a given "research service."

Perhaps a global consortium of geneologists, anthropologists, geneticists, paleontologists, historians. ... and by all means throw in a few statisticians, mathematicians and philosophers...
should convene for purposes of agreeing upon a STANDARD for how much gene data is sufficient, in the current world, for a given purpose, to be a "valid" sampling to determination for a certainty what part of Africa a black person's ancestors lived in. Oh, yes, and let's throw in some geologists, too, to help with making educated guesses about what naturl calamities might have caused some atypical transportation of samples from one place on earth to another, where those of a specimens of remains of creatures that lived in one geographical area might have gotten moved somehow from actual place where the creatures lived.

For purposes of a "research service," where so many loose ends are not completely tidied up even by the best in a field, and that "research service" is not a matter of life and death, what
are the boundaries beyond which a somewhat informed guess is abusive. The "standards givers" (of above-suggested progeny) might also wish to rule on what is, and is not, NITPICKING as to how accurate something is which is, in relation to a given purpose, reliant upon a state of a field of scientific inquiry, at best, only very crudely and approximate, in and of itself.

(:>

Gilll

Why ask for opinions when there's an easy test of the hypothesis that this company is running a scam. Submit some DNA from sources of known origin, and compare the results. If you suspect a real failure to run any discriminating tests at all (meaning they can't even tell black from white, etc.), then have some white northern europeans, or chinese of known ancestry submit their DNA. Perhaps this test should be submitted through an African American intermediary who will serve as a pseudo test subject.

It is sad to see professional type enterprises that are, more than likely, scamming individuals.

This doesn't look like a scam.

I'm not quite sure how accurate the results of the test may be (and AA seems toa dmit there is some margin for error, so they aren't a scam)
It doesn't exactly seem a particularly useful application of breaking genetic technologies (unless you consider making lots of moolah useful).

The people who subscribe to these services, like people who read their horoscopes in the daily newspaper, don't want science, they want mythopoiesis. If you give people exactly what they want, is it a scam?

I don't know much about AA genetics, but I am wondering about the (reported) statement "determine which present-day African country you share ancestry with."
I thought the present African borders had, at least partly, their origin in the colony split made by European powers in the XIX century.
So I am ready to believe there are markers that can somewhat determine which African ETHNY you share ancestry with, this would make scientific sense (though I have no idea if such markers/polymorphism were discovered for real yet and are 100% reliable), but something country-specific I strongly doubt...
Anyway, who really cares? As someone previously indicated, such information about where your grand-grand-grand-mother lived, true or not, this is quite like an horoscope. You are told for a fee that you come from Ghana. If you believe it and find it useful, why not. If you don't, no big issue either. As for the real origin being Ghana or Cameroon...who really cares?

It really would be interesting to know our ancestry, bu whether it is worth that much of money is a different question.

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