Collaborative Research on the Genetic Efects of Culture: Y Chromosome DNA, mtDNA, and Patrilineal Kinship in the Dogon of Mali

亲属关系是人类社会生活的普遍特征，在美国，家谱是第二大最受欢迎的爱好。然而，尽管人们对亲属关系如此着迷，但一个根本的谜团却被忽视了：人们是否采取了符合自己基因利益的亲属关系做法？或者，文化定义了导致基因基础变得模糊的亲属关系实践？这项研究将探索亲属关系的文化和遗传领域之间的一致性，并通过这样做，阐明生物学和文化之间更广泛的关系。这是一项合作项目，将人类种群遗传学家的专业知识与人类学家的专业知识相结合。这项跨学科的研究将把最先进的分子技术引入人种学领域的研究，并提供丰富的人种学数据集，以允许使用遗传序列数据提出新的问题。这项研究的重点是西非马里的多贡人，这是一种传统的谷子种植者。多贡人是这项研究的理想之选，因为他们采用了各种似乎是出于生殖动机的文化习俗。这项研究将检验这样一种假设，即这些文化规则服务于执行这些规则的人的遗传利益，并导致文化与生物学的紧密映射。这项研究还将测试关于人类合作基础的替代假设。这一目标意义重大，因为它将是利用DNA测序中的遗传相关性数据对人类群体中的帮助行为进行的首批分析之一。这项研究的更广泛影响包括对美国和马里学生进行基因技术和定量田野调查方法的培训。医疗居民将在发展中国家获得经验，并与非洲农村卫生机构分享他们的专业知识。这些结果将在科学期刊、基因数据库和一本专门的专著中传播。

Kinship is a universal feature of human social life and, in the United States, genealogy is the second most popular hobby. Yet despite this fascination with kinship, a fundamental mystery has been neglected: Do people adopt kinship practices that serve the interests of their genes? Or does culture define kinship practices causing genetic underpinnings to become obscured? This study will explore the congruence between the cultural and genetic spheres of kinship and, in so doing, shed light on the broader relationship between biology and culture. It is a collaborative venture that combines the expertise of a human population geneticist with that of an anthropologist. This interdisciplinary research will introduce state of the art molecular technology to ethnographic field studies and provide a rich ethnographic data set to permit new questions to be asked using genetic sequence data. The study focuses on the Dogon, a traditional millet farming people of Mali, West Africa. The Dogon are ideal for this research because they employ a variety of cultural practices that appear to be reproductively motivated. This research will test the hypothesis that these cultural rules serve the genetic interests of those who enforce them and that they lead to a close mapping of culture onto biology. The study will also test alternative hypotheses about the basis for human cooperation. This objective is significant because it will be one of the first analyses of helping behavior in a human population that uses data on genetic relatedness from DNA sequencing. The broader impacts of the study include the training of American and Malian students in genetic techniques and quantitative fieldwork methods. Medical residents will gain experience in a developing country and share their expertise with a rural African health facility. The results will be disseminated in scientific journals, genetic databases, and a specialized monograph.