TY - JOUR
T1 - Perspectives on human variation through the lens of diversity and race
AU - Chakravarti, Aravinda
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; all rights reserved.
PY - 2015/9/1
Y1 - 2015/9/1
N2 - Human populations, however defined, differ in the distribution and frequency of traits they display and diseases to which individuals are susceptible. These need to be understood with respect to three recent advances. First, these differences are multicausal and a result of not only genetic but also epigenetic and environmental factors. Second, the actions of genes, although crucial, turn out to be quite dynamic and modifiable, which contrasts with the classical view that they are inflexible machines. Third, the diverse human populations across the globe have spent too little time apart from our common origin 50,000 years ago to have developed many individually adapted traits. Human trait and disease differences by continental ancestry are thus as much the result of nongenetic as genetic forces.
AB - Human populations, however defined, differ in the distribution and frequency of traits they display and diseases to which individuals are susceptible. These need to be understood with respect to three recent advances. First, these differences are multicausal and a result of not only genetic but also epigenetic and environmental factors. Second, the actions of genes, although crucial, turn out to be quite dynamic and modifiable, which contrasts with the classical view that they are inflexible machines. Third, the diverse human populations across the globe have spent too little time apart from our common origin 50,000 years ago to have developed many individually adapted traits. Human trait and disease differences by continental ancestry are thus as much the result of nongenetic as genetic forces.
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U2 - 10.1101/cshperspect.a023358
DO - 10.1101/cshperspect.a023358
M3 - Article
C2 - 26330522
AN - SCOPUS:84940867725
SN - 2157-1422
VL - 5
JO - Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine
JF - Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine
IS - 9
M1 - a023358
ER -