Development of Protocols for Efficient Use of Rare Anthropological DNA Samples

衡量人类遗传多样性的程度一直是 体质人类学的目标 在1960年代和1970年代 数以万计的血液（和其他组织）样本被收集起来， 遗传学家和体质人类学家从各种各样的 原住民。 当时，大多数关于遗传变异的研究 集中在红细胞酶和较小程度的血清 proteins. 有核白色细胞被认为是无用的， 一般被丢弃。 然而，DNA中的信息 水平被丢弃，这可能是现在非常有用的现代 分子生物学技术 斯通金和韦斯提议 发展技术，主要依靠一种叫做PCR的新技术， 从仅存的几个白色物种中提取基因数据 每个样本可能包含的细胞。 鉴于有 仍然有成千上万的红细胞样本在冰箱里， 世界上，大量的信息遗传变异可能是 如果他们成功了，就解锁。 这是一个特别重要的 许多人类群体正在迅速消失， 基因和文化实体。

Gauging the extent of human genetic diversity has long been one of the goals of physical anthropology. During the 1960s and 1970s tens of thousands of blood (and other tissue) samples were gathered by geneticists and physical anthropologists from a wide variety of native peoples. At the time, most research on genetic variability centered on the red cell enzymes and to a lesser extent serum proteins. The nucleated white cells were viewed as useless and generally discarded. With them however, information at the DNA level was discarded, which could now be very useful given modern molecular biological techniques. Stoneking and Weiss propose to develop techniques, largely relying on a new technique called PCR, to generate data at the genetic level from the few remaining white cells which each sample likely contains. Given that there are still tens of thousands of red cell samples in freezer around the world, large amounts of information on genetic variability may be unlocked if they are successful. This is an especially important project as many of the human groups are rapidly disappearing as genetic and cultural entities.