Monday, October 30, 2023

What is a ‘Mexican’? Huge genetic database untangles a complex history

Friends:

Sounds like these scientists found gold per this fascinating read on pathbreaking work on the Mexican genome. The Mexico Biobank (MXB) is an exciting development for geneticists as, according to Nature, this is "the most diverse collection of genetic information in the Global South." Also,

"The results of these genetics studies will also have takeaways for people of Mexican descent in other countries. “The population genomics of Latin America is also the genomics of the United States.”

For the record, "Mexican" is a Nahuatl term that comes into existence with the emergence of the nation state, upon the winning of independence from Spain in 1821. "Mexico" gets its name from the Nahuatl-speaking "Mexica" who are otherwise known as "Aztecs" still today.

The MXB holds much promise for improving health care for people on the continent, as well as connecting Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the Indigenous peoples of Mexico, the U.S. and beyond to a genetically diverse past.

-Angela Valenzuela

BYRODRIGO PÉREZ ORTEGA Oct. 11, 2023 | SCienCE

Mexican people, like these walking through an evening market in Coyoacán, in Mexico City, have a diverse mix of ancestries in their genome.LIGHTWORKS MEDIA/ALAMY

In 2000, Mexico’s health authority asked more than 40,000 rural and urban residents to donate blood as part of a massive, ongoing effort to create a nationally representative health database. For the first time that year, the survey also asked people for consent for their data to be used in future genetic studies.

Now, more than 20 years later, that effort is paying off. Researchers have used these data to create what they’re calling the Mexico Biobank (MXB). The repository, described today in Nature, represents the most diverse collection of genetic information in the Global South.

A second paper, also published today in Nature, describes findings from a project called the Mexico City Prospective Study (MCPS). Here, researchers combed through samples from more than 140,000 individuals from Mexico City to discover genetic variants associated with their ancestry and health, making it the largest such database of genetic data of people from Latin America.

No comments:

Post a Comment