The Mapping of Humanity's Family Tree

“We approached IBM about getting involved—first choice, obvious choice—because of their expertise in setting up databases and the scientific expertise they have in analyzing huge data sets, and the guys at IBM loved it.”

“Biology has become an informational science, so the research problems that we focus on have to do with how you can analyze the data, what kind of new information you can extract and relate it to a biological phenomenon.”

“We assembled a team of top human population geneticists from around the world—13 principal investigators focusing on indigenous peoples around the world, with one focusing on ancient DNA, from the USA, Brazil, UK, Spain, France, Lebanon, South Africa, Russia, India, China and Australia. They are all experts in their respective fields, very thoughtful scientists, and passionate about the work they do. I’m lucky to be collaborating with them—it’s like having the ‘dream team’ of human population genetics.”

“From a scientific and technology point of view, I hope we can build a statistical model for human variation and migration through genotype and phenotype. The field research will validate or improve this model. There are a host of questions, for example, that are unique to each indigenous population—language, dialects, appearance—we want to answer. What correlations will we find? Can we trace how these particular characteristics are unique to individual indigenous groups?”

“10,000 or 100,000 is actually a small number. To learn the most from this project, what you want to do is have these 100,000 distributed in a manner that represents this diversity in the best possible manner. So you actually have to work in each of the geographies, make contact with as many indigenous populations as you can, and even amongst them try to get as diverse a population as possible. It’s better to sample ten different villages and have ten people from each of those villages than to get a hundred people from one village. Which means you really have to walk the planet.”

“[The Genographic Project] gives us much more intrinsic capability to apply to a myriad of other problems and issues in the world, in other industries, not just life sciences.”

“As the project evolves, and as needed, we will tap IBM’s vast resources of IT and Life Sciences specialists for assistance. Spencer and I will work closely together to supervise the input and analysis of field research and public DNA samples. And, as someone who understands both the computational and biological aspects of DNA research, I hope to be able to provide valuable input and insights to the project.”

“I think the ultimate goal for this project is to literally bring us all a little bit closer together.”

“It will be fascinating to discover: Who am I? Most people know their immediate recent genealogy, but beyond that, they have no clue. This project will help people better understand how each of them fits into this global puzzle, and where, along the way, varying groups of people crossed paths and helped to populate the world.”

“Ultimately, this is not just a genetic project; it’s motivated by an effort to understand diversity, history, anthropology and so on, it’s using genetics as a tool to do that.”

“One specific question is how do you actually go about reconstructing, or hypothesizing, what might be a family tree that explains all this diversity we see today? In a sense, you don’t have knowledge of all those branches of the tree, what you see are just the leaves, the populations that exist today. If you go back in time, some of these populations had common ancestors and they had common ancestors and so on.”

“You’ve also got this genetic thread that connects you with people halfway around the world, and to me, and to people you’ve never met before and that I’ve never met before. And we can actually track that using DNA.”

“Innovation by its very nature is open and collaborative, so this project gives us the chance to challenge ourselves to attempt something together that none of us could do by ourselves—certainly not something this innovative and on such a scale. To be able to work … with world-class leaders in human population genetics, so that we can reveal a deeper understanding of human diversity, is exhilarating.”

“Everyone involved—National Geographic, IBM, the Waitt Foundation, the field investigators, and the public—has a common goal: to better understand human diversity. I also hope one of the outcomes will be a deeper appreciation for the indigenous peoples of the world, through revelations borne of the field research and the analyses that demonstrate just how closely related we all really are.”