
The Overlooked Potential of African DNA - sethbannon
https://www.wired.com/story/the-massive-overlooked-potential-of-african-dna/
======
JoeAltmaier
All sounded good until the part about only collecting samples in Nigeria.

All the world has less genetic variation, than that between any two
populations in Africa. Sampling one African population is a start, in that it
nearly doubles the DNA sample space for study. But it won't help all of Africa
- just the one population sampled.

~~~
JadeNB
> All the world has less genetic variation, than that between any two
> populations in Africa.

I guess this is just a flight of poesy, but it seems like a literally
impossible statement.

~~~
thrower123
We can thank the ubiquitous Mercator projection for us having no idea how big
Africa actually is.

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/africa-
is-...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/africa-is-way-
bigger-than-you-think/)

~~~
carapace
World map of human migrations on a Dymaxion projection (no visible distortion
of landmass size/shape.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_prehistoric_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_prehistoric_human_migrations.jpg)

------
equalunique
In the US, would genetic information like the kind collected here be covered
by HIPAA? Are there any similar laws/regulations/protections in place for
Africans? Is there something unique about those protections (or lack therof)
when it comes to Nigeria, where 54gene is operating? I'm skeptical.

~~~
droithomme
I've had pretty heated arguments over this with an old friend of mine from one
of the big US companies. They argue forcefully that DNA information is not
medical data and HIPAA does not apply to them at all. I don't agree with their
claim, and believe HIPAA should apply, but it seems the US regulators are
going along with them for now.

~~~
carapace
Henrietta Lacks at scale.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks)

------
daemonk
Are they selling access to the DNA biobank or are they generating sequencing
data and selling access to the data? If you guys are generating sequencing
data, how are you guys doing it? I would assume you guys are actually
sequencing the DNA and not using a microarray? It would seem kind of pointless
to use a microarray designed for the current eurocentric data on these
samples. What coverage are you sequencing these samples at?

