The Founder effect and how it identifies ancestry
June 24, 2022 3:44 AM Subscribe
An interesting article about DNA and how Scientists can trace individual ancestry through genetic mutations.
Micro evolution can explain why some populations are lactose intolerant or why there are different blood types.
The article defines founder effect, a population bottleneck such as an ice age or geographical isolation that reduces breeding couples to such a level that genetic mutations are special markers to their descendants.
The article defines founder effect, a population bottleneck such as an ice age or geographical isolation that reduces breeding couples to such a level that genetic mutations are special markers to their descendants.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Interesting article, but the description doesn't come from the actual text of the paper and seems to be misleading / incorrect. Maybe repost with a more accurate summary? -- taz
The article is not about tracing individual ancestry.
The authors' findings are that founders' effects are much more common than previously thought - that is, that it doesn't take an ice age or geographic isolation (or genocide/systemic prejudice/cultural isolation that is legible across more than two thousand years of human history) for human populations to experience founder effects.
The ability to digest milk in human populations is not proposed to be due to founder effects - it has arisen independently in multiple human populations that live in different ecologic niches around the world.
Blood types are not hypothesized by "Scientists" to be a product of founder effects, either - are you referring to the discredited pop-science work of Peter D’Adamo's Eat Right 4 Your Type? There is not a hunter-gatherer blood type, agriculturalist blood type, etc.
I'm sorry that this is terse, but this post has strong "race realist" vibes to me.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 1:35 PM on June 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
The authors' findings are that founders' effects are much more common than previously thought - that is, that it doesn't take an ice age or geographic isolation (or genocide/systemic prejudice/cultural isolation that is legible across more than two thousand years of human history) for human populations to experience founder effects.
The ability to digest milk in human populations is not proposed to be due to founder effects - it has arisen independently in multiple human populations that live in different ecologic niches around the world.
Blood types are not hypothesized by "Scientists" to be a product of founder effects, either - are you referring to the discredited pop-science work of Peter D’Adamo's Eat Right 4 Your Type? There is not a hunter-gatherer blood type, agriculturalist blood type, etc.
I'm sorry that this is terse, but this post has strong "race realist" vibes to me.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 1:35 PM on June 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
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1) why capitalize Scientists? They’re (we’re) just regular people who have applied a particular method of thinking to a particular problem. You can do it, anyone can do it. Just takes patience
2) an interesting effect of bottlenecks and founder effects can be seen in Holstein dairy cattle, which in the United States have an effective population size of around 50 (there are 3-4 sires whose offspring account for over 70% of the dairy cattle in the North America). As a side effect of extreme selection on the DGAT1 gene for dairy production and butterfat content, the fitness of the herds against novel pathogens is… somewhat variable. (Compare to Ashkenazi populations and BRCA1/2 variant prevalence due to selection almost exclusively on intelligence/resourceful traits, or African populations where malaria selected for HbS heterozygotes due to the parasite having more trouble invading blood cells in carriers).
Eugenicists usually bristle at the notion of contextual fitness (realistically, the only kind there is), as with Kenyans acquiring lactase persistence by a de novo variant once they started herding cattle (obviously you’re more likely to survive a famine if you can drink your cow’s milk without shitting your guts out). The idea that changes in the world could change who is “fit” makes this worldview uncomfortable.
Therefore, I commend it to you anyone starts blathering about “superior” genes or genetics. Jesse Owens ought to have shut these fools up, but apparently additional examples are always welcome.
posted by apathy at 6:56 AM on June 24, 2022