WIKIMEDIA, TAKATO MARUIComputational biologist Yaniv Erlich of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Whitehead Institute has teamed up with the family history network MyHeritage to supplement the construction of family trees with big data. The project aims to “analyze the extent to which genealogical data can explain different aspects of human life such as personal well-being and patterns of immigration,” according to a press release put out last week (October 23).
“Family trees are basic yet powerful assets in human genetics,” said Erlich, who presented the work last week at the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting in Boston, in the release. “Until now, the use of large scale genealogy data in genetic research has not been fully tapped. We are extremely excited about this collaboration and hope that this research will contribute to the broad scientific community and to the public good.”
Erlich and his colleagues pulled data on birth and death dates and locations from more than 43 million anonymized public profiles hosted on MyHeritage’s Geni.com World Family Tree and constructed the world’s biggest family trees—including one containing 13 million individuals and dating back to the 15th century. As an example of how ...
