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Human evolution

Tangled genetic routes

Nature volume 416, pages 32–33 (2002)Cite this article

It is generally accepted that early human evolution took place in Africa, with human populations spreading from there. Using genetics to trace events in more detail remains a challenging task.

How best can the riches of human genetics be mined for information about our history and geography? In the tradition of human population genetics advanced over the past 50 years1, the search is on for evidence of the isolation, adaptation and dispersal of populations over time. In this case, there is no digging for fossils, no three-dimensional reconstructions of skulls and such, just the requirement to collect 10-ml samples of blood. However, we are sometimes at a loss to disentangle population structure from population history. The diversity of DNA sequences in a modern population is an accumulation of events in the remote past. But it is unclear that the same forces that change allele frequencies (the incidence with which different gene forms occur) also change the genealogies of genes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genetics and Molecular Biology, University of Hawaii, Biomedical Sciences Building A-204, Manoa, 1960 East–West Road, Honolulu, 96822, Hawaii, USA

    Rebecca L. Cann

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  1. Rebecca L. Cann
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Correspondence to Rebecca L. Cann.

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Cann, R. Tangled genetic routes. Nature 416, 32–33 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/416032a

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/416032a

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