"Anthropological Genetics in the Genomic Era: Challenges, Opportunities, & Directions"
2010 American Association of Anthropological Genetics Symposium (co-sponsored by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists)
The symposium was held April 17, 2010 at the Hotel Albuquerque at Old Town, Room Alvarado C, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Organizers and Co-Chairs: GRACIELA S. CABANA (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) and LORENA M. HAVILL (Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, San Antonio, TX).
Overview: The genomic era is in full swing. No longer limited by low‐resolution marker sets or cost-prohibitive technology, genetic researchers have been powerfully addressing traditional questions of anthropological import in new ways. High‐throughput technologies have allowed the typing of hundreds of thousands of markers throughout the human genome, so that questions involving human variation, population structure, and selection, and their relationships to human evolutionary history, phenotype (including “race”), disease susceptibility, etc. have been at the forefront of anthropological genetic research. Contributors to this symposium showcase some of the most innovative research of the last decade, while at the same time highlighting the concomitant challenges to anthropological genetic research. Despite the potential of these new technologies and methodologies, they require training in novel laboratory methods and bioinformatics to access them. For this reason, anthropological geneticists – particularly those in anthropology departments – have been relatively slow to employ them. Additionally, anthropologists must seek high level funding simply from non‐traditional sources to access some of latest sequencing, chip, and array technology. How can anthropological geneticists reposition themselves to face these challenges?
| Time |
Topic
and
Speaker(s) |
| 8:00 am |
Anthropological
genomics: Old dogs learn new tricks. G.S. CABANA, L.M. HAVILL. |
| 8:15 am | Integrating social science and anthropological genetics: race, human variation, and health. C.C. GRAVLEE, C.J. MULLIGAN. |
| 8:30 am |
Genetic analyses reveal a history of serial founder effects, admixture between long- separated founding populations in Oceania, and interbreeding with archaic humans. S. JOYCE, K.L. HUNLEY, J.C. LONG. |
| 8:45 am | De novo sequencing and evolutionary analyses of liver-expressed genes in primates. G. PERRY, Y. WANG, J. MARIONI, Y. GILAD, J. PRITCHARD. |
| 9:00 am | Developing and
genotyping SNPs for non-model organisms: Examples from the genus
Macaca. R.S. MALHI, J.S. TRASK, D.G. SMITH. |
| 9:15 am | Technological
advances in biomolecular analysis of ancient disease. A.C. STONE, A.K.
WILBUR, T. CAMPBELL, J.E. BUIKSTRA. |
| 9:30 am | Rapid field
assessment of mycobacterial exposure in primates. A. WILBUR, L.
PFISTER, A.C. STONE, L. JONES-ENGEL. |
| 9:45 am |
Using a human assay to discover and type SNPs in orthologous regions of the baboon genome: the “spaghetti-on-the-wall” experiment. MICHAEL C. MAHANEY, C. BELLIS, M.A. CARLESS, D.E. NEWMAN, L.A. COX. |
| 10:00 am | Monkeys in the
mountains versus the plains: geography drives genetic variation. U.
RAMAKRISHNAN. |
| 10:15 am | Break |
| 10:30 am | New evidence for
natural selection acting at the ALDH locus. J.C. LONG, K.L. HUNLEY. |
| 10:45 am | Anthropological genomics in the era of affordable and highthroughput technologies. Ö. GÖKÇÜMEN. |
| 11:00 am | Genetic diversity of
European population isolates in the context of neighboring populations.
J. NOVEMBRE, K. VEERAMAH, A. TONJES, P. KOVACS, M. STUMVOLL. |
| 11:15 am | Explaining patterns
of human genetic variation using coalescent-based models of human
origins. M. DEGIORGIO, M. JAKOBSSON, J.H. DEGNAN, N.A. ROSENBERG. |
| 11:30 am | Discussant: D.
O’ROURKE. |
| 11:45 am | General discussion |