Photograph by Colby Bishop.Members of the Geno team standing in front of Arizona Research Labs
Posted by Matt Kaplan.
We are excited to have members of the Genographic global research centers joining us here at Arizona Research Labs.
It is right here in my lab that we process the public participation samples (from the public participation kits many of you purchase on the website) for the Genographic Project. So far we have processed over 300,000 samples!
Because each individual Genographic research center processes their own field research samples - which come from our collaborations with indigenous peoples living in remote areas - this workshop is an opportunity for members from all of the Genographic laboratories to come together and address the opportunities and the challenges of coordinated global science.
Photograph by Colby BishopMatt Kaplan describes how Genographic samples are tested at ARL.
Yesterday's session started with a group review of all the mutation detection tools. With a global project of this size, all of the regional centers have different experiences with the various mutations that are specific to the populations in their region; work in Moscow for example, is very different from work in Beirut. Due to the varying ancestry in each region, some haplogroups that are common to some centers are rare to others. Therefore, centers with the most experience with certain mutations are able to share information with centers that rarely use those tests.
We also worked to improve our common technical nomenclature and data formatting across all regional centers, something that we have continued to develop since the beginning of the project. While this on the surface may seem elementary, it plays a central role in enabling the data produced independently in each center to be compiled into one master data set, the likes of which has never been produced to date.
Genographic Scientific Manager David Soria discusses Genographic lab protocol during the Genographic technical workshop.
To conclude the day, the centers took part in an open discussion on how to improve the methods used to upload results into the central database. In genetics there are many ways to describe the same data. While all of these various delineations are correct, they are all different and cannot all be used in the same master database for later analysis. In a project of this magnitude we have seen them all. Some labs report data as; "Mutant and Wildtype", others as "0 and 1", others as "+ and -", others as "1 and 2", others as "Ancestral and Derived", and so on. All of these are correct and express the same information, but by standardizing this information globally we are able to maintain a consistent database.
This is an amazing, interactive initiative with great effort and collective thought behind it, and we look forward to seeing more knowledge diffusion throughout the workshop!
-Matthew E Kaplan, Human Origins Genotyping Laboratory Arizona Research Labs, Project Lead
