Sunday, May 27, 2007

The Genographic Project

Last year I clipped an article from the WSJ with the headline Project Hopes to Trace Your Ancestors Back 10,000 Years. The article reported a joint project commenced by the National Geographic Society and IBM to assemble a massive genetic database that would catalog certain genetic markers left in DNA from generation to generation. The result would be that one could see what path his ancestors took on their migration from East Africa, from whence modern man supposedly came, to his eventual home. (With Mary, that eventual home would be? Oh well. She always was a homebody.) I checked the status of this project recently, and it seems to be well under way.

Mail-in DNA testing kits are available. You would send in a swab taken from your cheek and the lab will find the markers in your DNA and match them with the movement of different groups of humans up to 60,000 years ago. Go here for more information.

(I must say that after visiting Kenya, it would not be a leap to think that God established the Garden there.)

6 comments:

Paul Stokes said...

Glad to have you visit, Biby! Come back again. (I see you are a movie fan. Amen to all that.)

Macon said...

What? I'm not too excited about submitting my DNA to a genetic databse.

I'm not as worried about it falling into the wrong hands as I am about it falling into well-meaning but incompetent hands. Which is to say, my government.

Macon said...

btw, awesome avatar, Padre!

Paul Stokes said...

Thanks, Macon. As to your first comment, we are alreay in Google's database, so were're dead meat anyway.

Paul Stokes said...

we're, as in "we are", of course.

Sean Meade said...

nice post, Paul

(but you've raised your son up to be both cynical *and* paranoid ;-)

(and i agree with the nice pic avatar)