Oxford scientists have created the first family tree of mankind

The genetics era brought advances in next-generation hierarchical technology, which advanced the field of genetics. Today, DNA sequencing is faster, cheaper, and more accurate than ever before, allowing it to be used in a wide range of fields of science.

DNA sequencing is commonly used in modern medicine to answer questions about the history of the earth, from diagnosis to drug development, agriculture, and ancient DNA analysis.

Now developed by researchers at the Big Data Institute (BDI) at Oxford University “First Destroyer” The family tree of mankind by combining ancient and modern genetic sequences from eight key data banks. Is currently being published Science.

The number of genetic data repositories that collect and store sorted data from people around the world is increasing. Databases are often used in research studies, for example, to analyze the genetic makeup of a disease by analyzing individuals diagnosed at a specific level in the data bank.

However, these repositories are not limited to human DNA samples; There are genetic data banks for different types of organisms found on Earth.

As the amount of genetic data generally available increases, so do the opportunities to study it The hereditary lineage of the human population. As a result, researchers are able to put together a picture of how our genetic variation originated and how different peoples around the world interact with each other.

“The theoretical background for gene-based genetics that describe how we inherited genes from our ancestors has grown over the past three decades.”Anthony Wilder Wohns, a former doctoral student at the Big Data Institute (BDI) at Oxford University and postgraduate researcher at MIT and Harvard’s Broad Institute, explained. However, in reality this structure is a very difficult statistical problem to evaluate. “

Difficulties in connecting large datasets from different databases have been a major obstacle to this research effort. Wilder Vones, one of the primary authors of this new study conducted during his time at BDI, declared that it was “a new way to easily link millions of genes from ancient and modern peoples”.

Vones, along with his colleagues, used this method to create the “first draft” of the family tree of mankind.. “We created We combine an innovative method of reducing genetic relationships without having to compare each DNA sequence with another and another algorithm that keeps common ancestral dates by treating all descendants as a single network He explained. Furthermore, by evaluating the entire lineage of mankind, we were able to develop methods that would allow us to use the entire gene to estimate when and how our ancestors first lived. “

The data were consolidated from a total of eight datasets, seven of which are already publicly available and one is a collection of novels, known as afanasievo, containing ancient DNA.

This tree contains complete genes from 3,609 individuals from 215 different populations. Genetic mapping of more than 7,000 genes as each individual inherits specific gene segments (known as alleles) from one parent.

The lineage of each genetic region can be compared to that of a tree. By looking at the “trees” in large datasets collectively, the research team was able to link specific regions over time using ancient DNA data, creating a “ancestral restoration map” that shows where the variation originally originated. There are about 27 million ancestors on this map.

Using algorithms to determine where ancestors lived, researchers have been able to retrieve events in human history, such as migration from Africa, from a genetic perspective.

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