gaurav1987
Gaurav Garg
Indians make up one of the major human ancestry groups, with relatively little genetic differentiation among the people from different parts of the country, according to a new US study.
“We were struck both by the low level of diversity amongst people spanning such a large geographical region, and by the fact that people of the Indian sub-continent constituted a distinct group when compared to populations from other parts of the world,” said Pragna I Patel, an Indian American scientist who led the study.
For their study, Patel, who is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Southern California (USC), and Noah Rosenberg, assistant professor in the department of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan, conducted genetic analysis of Indian-born individuals in the US.
Their studies of 432 individuals representing 15 different Indian populations, have begun to shed light on the genetic variations of the diverse population of India.
Patel took up the project because Indians are generally underrepresented in studies related to genetic diseases despite the fact that the people of India constitute more than one-sixth of the world’s entire population.
And with the growth of modernisation, complex genetic diseases associated with urban and western lifestyles have risen to near-epidemic proportions, making genetic cataloguing and association studies of particular importance.
Patel’s group is using this study as a foundation for future studies on the genetic basis of various common diseases in Asian Indians – such as heart disease, which is highly prevalent in this population.
“We were struck both by the low level of diversity amongst people spanning such a large geographical region, and by the fact that people of the Indian sub-continent constituted a distinct group when compared to populations from other parts of the world,” said Pragna I Patel, an Indian American scientist who led the study.
For their study, Patel, who is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Southern California (USC), and Noah Rosenberg, assistant professor in the department of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan, conducted genetic analysis of Indian-born individuals in the US.
Their studies of 432 individuals representing 15 different Indian populations, have begun to shed light on the genetic variations of the diverse population of India.
Patel took up the project because Indians are generally underrepresented in studies related to genetic diseases despite the fact that the people of India constitute more than one-sixth of the world’s entire population.
And with the growth of modernisation, complex genetic diseases associated with urban and western lifestyles have risen to near-epidemic proportions, making genetic cataloguing and association studies of particular importance.
Patel’s group is using this study as a foundation for future studies on the genetic basis of various common diseases in Asian Indians – such as heart disease, which is highly prevalent in this population.