Last week I announced the Harappa Ancestry Project. It now has its own dedicate website, http://www.harappadna.org. Additionally, it has its own Facebook page. For Zack to get his own URL he needs about 10 more “likes,” so please like it! (if you are so disposed) Finally, from what I’ve heard the first wave of the 23andMe holiday sale results are coming online this week. Actually, one of the relatives who I purchased the kit for is in processing currently, so I know that we should have a bunch of new people in the system very, very, soon.
Speaking of people, last I heard Zack had gotten about a dozen responses. That’s enough to start an initial round of runs, but obviously he needs more people. More importantly, the goal here is to get better population coverage. One of the things we know intuitively and also from the most current research is the existence of a lot of within-region population variation in South Asia which is structured by community. In other words, a sample of 30 people, where you have 3 from 10 different communities exhibiting geographical and caste diversity is going to be far more useful right now than 300 Jatts from Indian Haryana. Getting 300 Jatts for Haryana would be interesting in that it would give you a window into intra-communal variance, but there’s diminishing returns on the inferences you could make about South Asians as a whole.
If you know someone who has done the 23andMe testing and has preponderant ancestry from South Asia, Iran, Burma, or Tibet, please forward the the URL for the Harappa Ancestry Project. If you are a 23andMe member, and involved in the forums, it might be useful to post a comment thread on this project, as the people you share genes with would see it.
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