Development of Protocols for Efficient Use of Rare Anthropological DNA Samples

测量人类基因多样性的程度一直是体质人类学的目标之一。在20世纪60年代和70年代，遗传学家和体质人类学家从各种各样的土著民族中收集了数以万计的血液（和其他组织）样本。当时，大多数关于遗传变异的研究都集中在红细胞酶和较小程度的血清蛋白上。有核的白细胞被认为是无用的，通常被丢弃。然而，在DNA水平上的信息被丢弃了，在现代分子生物学技术的帮助下，这些信息现在可能非常有用。Stoneking和Weiss建议开发一种技术，主要依靠一种叫做PCR的新技术，从每个样本可能包含的少数剩余白细胞中产生基因水平的数据。考虑到世界各地仍有数以万计的红细胞样本在冷冻中，如果他们成功的话，可能会解锁大量关于遗传变异的信息。这是一个特别重要的项目，因为许多人类群体作为遗传和文化实体正在迅速消失。

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.