By collaborating globally in a new, large-scale effort, researchers have made strong progress in sequencing genomes from regions and countries across Africa. These findings will enable more broadly representative and relevant studies ranging from basic through clinical genetics. The researchers' new data and preliminary observations were presented as a featured plenary abstract at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2019 Annual Meeting in Houston. The abstract is titled “High-Depth Genome Sequencing in Diverse African Populations Reveals the Impact of Ancestral Migration, Cultural Demography, and Infectious Disease on the Human Genome.” "There is a dearth of baseline genetic data for African populations," said Neil Hanchard, MD, DPhil, Assistant Professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, who presented the work. As part of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Consortium, a collaborative effort supported by the National Institutes of Health to conduct genomic research in Africa, Dr. Hanchard and his colleagues sequenced the whole genomes of 426 individuals from 13 African countries, whose ancestries represented 50 ethnolinguistic groups from across the continent. Of the 426 genomes sequenced, 320 were analyzed at high depth. This allowed the researchers to examine rare genetic variants in an accurate and quantifiable way, in addition to the common variants that have been the focus of most of the previous genetic studies in Africans, Dr. Hanchard explained.Login Or Register To Read Full Story