A team of American and Korean scientists has sequenced thegenetic mapfull of a citizen ofKorea, who have calledAK1to preserve your anonymity. This is the fifth human genome sequenced to date. The above were from a Yoruba African, two individuals from northwestern Europe (Craig Venter and DNA “father” James Watson) and a Chinese citizen. In this way, the new work expands the knowledge about theEthnic diversityand the individual variation that underlies certain diseases.
The scientists, led by Jeong-Sun Seo, focused on changes in single nucleotide polymorphisms orSNPs, which are nothing more than changes in a single letter of DNA. One of the experts, Kim Jong-Il, from the Institute of Genomic Medicine at Seoul University in Korea, described SNPs as “the most important source ofinherited differences between humans“.
In total, the team detected more than3.45 million SNPsin the genetic map of the Korean man, and related them to a predisposition to suffer various types of cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Details are published today in the magazineNature.
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