SNPs as Windows on Evolution
Recent studies reveal that the human species is young and
genetically uniform
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2002/jan/lewis_p16_020107.html
[...]
SNPs reveal that Homo sapiens is a young species, with so little time having
elapsed since origin that humans are what Venter calls "virtual identical
twins." "The amount of variation in the human population is way less than
expected for a population of 6 billion," concurred Andrew Clark, a professor of
biology at Pennsylvania State University, indicating a rapid expansion.
"The poverty of variation tells us about the structure of the early human
population. The rate of heterozygosity per nucleotide position is closely
related to the size of a population and the mutation rate. Humans are a small
population that grew large fast, from 10,000 founders in Africa 3,000
generations ago. Most of today's variation is the very same variation we walked
out of Africa with. We are an extremely closely related species," said Lander.
[...]
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Bill Barowy
"Everything is a becoming, without beginning or end"
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