[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1635662803832{margin-top: 36px !important;}”]<\/p>\n
Population diversity in genomics databases is the key to providing true precision medicine<\/em><\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n In the last decade, several projects in different countries launched to try to rectify these disparities. The Human Heredity and Health in Africa Initiative, also known as H3Africa, is a continent-wide consortium of human geneticists and other researchers, supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.K.\u2019s Wellcome Trust, which was set up in 2011.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n Last year, members of H3Africa published an important study in Nature that involved whole-genome sequencing of 426 individuals from 50 different population groups across Africa. This study revealed 3 million new genetic variants and striking differences between African population groups and Western European groups.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n \u201cOur recent study highlights how much we can still learn by even adding a relatively small number of genomes from understudied populations,\u201d Zan\u00e9 Lombard, one of the authors of the 2020 paper who is a researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, told Clinical Omics.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n \u201cWe also show that we are not yet reaching a plateau in new discoveries, and therefore can learn much more by increasing the number of African genomes available in the global resource.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n A new genome project for Africa\u2014the Three Million African Genomes (3MAG) project\u2014was proposed last year as a next step to learn more about the broad genetic diversity across the continent, but how easy it will be to set up such an ambitious project is uncertain.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n \u201cFunding for such a large-scale agenda might be challenging,\u201d said Lombard. \u201cThere is a definitive need for political will and support from local governments to ensure the success of such an initiative. It is important that the scientists involved make a clear case for the potential health, infrastructural and intellectual benefits to ensure buy-in from local Health and Science Ministries. Although there is a good foundation of sequencing technology on the continent, I would imagine that a major investment in further high-throughput facilities on the continent would be necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”Read Full Article” style=”outline” color=”juicy-pink” align=”center” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.clinicalomics.com%2Fmagazine-editions%2Fvolume-8-issue-no-5-september-october-2021%2Fprecision-through-diversity%2F||target:%20_blank|”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1635662803832{margin-top: 36px !important;}”] Precision Through Diversity Population diversity in [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-11569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-175"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11569"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11572,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11569\/revisions\/11572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}