California company unveils new genome technique

Pacific Biosciences of Menlo Park, hopes to be able to read a person's genome in about half an hour by about 2010.

Phoenician genetic legacy

1 in 17 men in the mediteranean area may be descended from a phoenician man.
Highest frequencies of phoenician haplotypes were in Tangiers, western Sicily,Cyprus and Lebanon area.

Haplotypes J2 and E3B were found in high frequencies in those areas.

Genes linked to drug addiction

Scientists believe that genetic factors is involved in 70% of cases of cocaine addictions.
A variant ofthe CAMK4 gene has been linked to cocaine addiction.

genes linked to kidney disease

apol1(apolipoprotein l-1) variants(rs73885319,rs 71785313 and rs60910145) have been linked to kidney disease.
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MYH9 locus variants(e-1) have been linked to nondiabetic kidney disease in African americans.
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genes linked to parkinson's Disease

Mutation in a gene called LKKR2 or G2019S has been linked in some studies to Parkinson's Disease.

SNCA has also been linked to parkinson's
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Human population genetics in India.

India still has the `out of africa' genetic footprint.

The M2 mitochondrial DNA haplogroup split from the main M haplogroup in India about 50,000 years ago.

About 10% of tribals have this haplogroup.

A study of 132 people from 25 groups, plus 560,000 snps(405 snps from 55 groups).

Nyshi and ao naga respectively tribals in Arunachel pradesh and Nagaland,speakers of a Tibeto-burman language genetically cluster with the chinese..

Those who speak Indo-european or were of higher castes eg brahmin,I presume, tended to cluster with western eurasians.

Genomics Institue at Harvard University receives endowment

The Broad Institue of MIT and Harvard will receive an endowment of $400 million from Eli Broad,an philanthropist, which will create a non-profit organisation.

The institue does things like genome sequencing and genetic disease factors.