Amazing stuff! Unfortunately, in a sense Africa is still terra incognita!
"A new study published in Nature yesterday (October 28) and conducted through Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa), a consortium devoted to increasing African representation in genetics research, uncovered 3 million new genetic variants in one of the most extensive studies of African genomes reported to date. ... To date, only a limited number of the around 2,000 African ethnolinguistic groups have been genetically characterized, predominantly using genotyping arrays, which contained a limited number of variants that are common in European populations. ... In terms of population genetics, we discovered a migration that was never known. It was a trans-Sahelian migration that moved into central Nigeria. The timing of the migration into Nigeria didn’t correspond to any of the previous known migrations. We also kind of identified the root of the Bantu migration to southern Africa—that’s a very hotly debated topic not only in genetics, but also in linguistics. ...In Nigeria, if you travel 500 kilometers, there are two populations who have very distinct genetic makeups. [We had a similar finding in] Uganda where you have two populations, and you can see from the genetic data that they have very distinct susceptibility to disease. So, putting together a very granular map like a hyper-resolution genetic map as well as a phenotype map is important. ..."
"The African continent is regarded as the cradle of modern humans and African genomes contain more genetic variation than those from any other continent, yet only a fraction of the genetic diversity among African individuals has been surveyed1. Here we performed whole-genome sequencing analyses of 426 individuals—comprising 50 ethnolinguistic groups, including previously unsampled populations—to explore the breadth of genomic diversity across Africa. We uncovered more than 3 million previously undescribed variants, most of which were found among individuals from newly sampled ethnolinguistic groups, as well as 62 previously unreported loci that are under strong selection, which were predominantly found in genes that are involved in viral immunity, DNA repair and metabolism. "
Following article contains interviews with researchers involved in this project.
New Genome Sequences Reveal Undescribed African Migration | The Scientist Magazine® An analysis of the genomes of people from 50 ethnolinguistic groups in Africa spots 62 genes under positive selection and 3 million more genetic variants than previously documented.Here is the link to the underlying Nature research article:
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