Sherman, R. M. et al. Nat. Genet. 51, 30–35 (2019).

The current human reference genome is not representative of the diversity of human populations and thus is of limited use for studies of admixed populations. The 1000 Genomes Project has shown that 86% of variants in populations across five continents are present in only one continental group; African populations in particular have the highest number of variants. Sherman et al. deeply sequenced 910 individuals from the Consortium on Asthma among African-Ancestry Populations in the Americas to create an African pan-genome, which added 296.6 Mb of novel sequence—about 10% of the human genome. They found that 120 Mb are shared with Korean or Chinese populations, which suggests that these sequences were lost more recently. This pan-genome demonstrates that a single human reference is not sufficient for population genetic studies and supports the need for multiple references representing distinct human populations. The authors hope that over time such references will lead to a pan-genome that represents all human DNA.