The racial genetics paradox in biomedical research and public health.
The racial genetics paradox in biomedical research and public health.
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生物医学研究和公共卫生中的种族遗传学悖论。
DOI：
10.1093/phr/117.5.421
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发表时间：
2002
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Garte,Seymour
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Garte,Seymour
虽然种族的概念在美国具有明显的社会、历史和文化重要性，但它仍然很难定义。事实上，严格的生物学种族定义并不存在，最有用的种族定义涉及社会或文化参数以及特定的大陆人口，如欧洲人，亚洲人和非洲人。在表型水平上，没有好的生物学标准来确定任何个体的种族，甚至没有精确的标准来确定到底有多少种族存在。遗传学能更准确地定义种族吗？答案是否定的。在基因水平上，人类的变异是一个平滑的连续体，几乎没有证据表明存在明显的种族异质性。从各种基因组重新测序项目中获得的关于数千种DNA多态性的数据清楚地表明，人类群体中遗传变异的最大部分是由于群体内个体之间的差异，而不是群体之间的差异。根据该领域的大多数研究人员的说法，这些结果有效地否定了“种族”概念的遗传基础。1，2从过去几十万年人类迁徙和混合的角度来看，这是有道理的。目前基于表面特征或受自然选择强烈影响的其他表型（如肤色）的种族定义与整个基因组的数据完全不相关。
While the concept of race is of obvious social, historical, and cultural importance in the United States, it remains very difficult to define. In fact, a strict biological definition of race among humans does not exist, and most useful definitions of race involve social or cultural parameters as well as referring to specific continental populations such as Europeans, Asians, and Africans. There are no good biological criteria on a phenotypic level to determine the race of any individual, or even to determine with any precision exactly how many races exist.Can genetics be used to more accurately define race? The answer is no. On a genetic level, human variation is a smooth continuum with very little evidence for sharp racially defined heterogeneities. The availability of data on thousands of DNA polymorphisms from the various genome re-sequencing projects has clearly shown that the largest part of genetic variability within the human population is due to differences among individuals within populations, rather than to differences between populations. According to most researchers in the field, these results effectively discredit a genetic basis for the concept of “race.” 1, 2 This makes sense from the perspective of human migration and admixture over the past hundreds of thousands of years. Present definitions of race based on superficial characteristics, or on other phenotypes strongly influenced by natural selection, such as skin color, simply do not correlate with data from the whole genome.