CAREER: Research, Education, and Capacity Building - Genomic Structure of Native Peruvian Populations

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The CAREER project integrates next-generation molecular genetics with an aggressive education strategy to prepare students and professionals in genomics and to communicate the importance of science to the public. The research questions asked are: What is the geographic pattern of human population diversity? and, How have migrations, the environment, and culture shaped this pattern? Addressing these questions provides a foundation for numerous fields of biological and medical science including the study of natural selection, the search for disease predisposing genes, and the handling of confounding factors in disease association research that are attributed to modern genetic exchange.The country of Peru will serve as a ideal case study: 1) to date, only one population in Peru has been studied at a genomic level; 2) Peru is ecologically diverse, with deserts, high plateaus, and the Amazon Jungle; 3) Peru has an extremely rich cultural prehistory and extensive present-day linguistic and ethnic diversity. The genomic data will be informative of sex-biased patterns of migration, the extent of genetic admixture between native and non-native peoples, and the role of geographic and linguistic barriers on patterns of human genetic diversity. The genetic data includes mitochondrial genomes and a genome-wide survey of 800 repeat motifs for 15 geographically dispersed native populations. These novel data will be integrated with previously published data providing the most extensive genomic sampling of human populations to date. Education activities will reach a broad audience by accounting for varied levels of training in biological science. They include an annual professional development workshop for high school and community college teachers, a course and hands-on experience in genetics for undergraduate students, courses and hands-on training in genomics for graduate students, capacity building in Peru, public education using an online course, and the dissemination of the research by a project website. This project will employ one professional, full-time technician who is Hispanic, and a number of undergraduate and graduate students will participate as research interns during the duration of the research.