Tag Archives: nepal

Participation Changes

Posted by on May 16, 2012 5 comments

Now that I have DIY HarappaWorld out, I am changing the participation requirements a little bit with somewhat different requirements for South Asians compared to other regions.

If you have any real ancestry from a South Asian origin, you are eligible to participate. Partial South Asian ancestry is okay. The list of countries of origin I count as South Asian are as follows:

  • Afghanistan
  • Bangladesh
  • Bhutan
  • India
  • Maldives
  • Nepal
  • Pakistan
  • Sri Lanka

Note that 2-3% South Asian from Dr. McDonald's BGA or Dodecad Project does not count as South Asian ancestry.

If you have all four of your grandparents from one of the following countries or regions, you can also send me your data.

  • Burma
  • Tibet
  • Uyghur from Xinjiang, China
  • Tajikistan
  • Kyrgyzstan
  • Kazakhstan
  • Uzbekistan
  • Turkmenistan
  • Iran
  • Turkey
  • Azerbaijan
  • Armenia
  • Georgia
  • North Caucasian Federal District, Russia
  • Iraq
  • Syria
  • Lebanon
  • Jordan

Relatives will only be accepted when they are a better replacement for current participants. For example, replacing a participant by his/her parents or his maternal uncle and paternal aunt gets us two unrelated participants (assuming, of course, that the two sides of the family are not related by blood). Another example could be if a participant is of partial South Asian ancestry and they get replaced by a relative who has more South Asian ancestry.

Everyone else can use DIY HarappaWorld. It's fairly easy to use on both Windows and Linux. The only hard part right now is that you have to install R to standardize your genome file. I might look into creating an executable for that to make it easier.

Finally, please be honest.

Xing et al Data

Posted by on January 28, 2011 6 comments

The data for Xing et al's paper "Toward a more uniform sampling of human genetic diversity: a survey of worldwide populations by high-density genotyping" is available online.

This dataset consists of 850 individuals, but 259 of them overlap with the HapMap. Another 15 samples had to be removed because they were too similar to others. I also removed Native American samples. This leaves us with 529 samples.

Ethnic group Count
Slovenian 25
Punjabi Arain 25
N. European 25
Nepalese 25
Kyrgyzstani 25
Iban 25
Buryat 25
Bambaran 25
Andhra Pradesh Brahmin 25
Kurd 24
Dogon 24
Irula 23
Thai 22
Pygmy 22
Urkarah 18
Tamil Nadu Brahmin 14
Hema 14
Tongan 13
Tamil Nadu Dalit 13
Samoan 13
!Kung 13
Japanese 13
Andhra Pradesh Mala 11
Pedi 10
Andhra Pradesh Madiga 10
Alur 10
Nguni 9
Sotho/Tswana 8
Vietnamese 7
Stalskoe 5
Chinese 5
Khmer Cambodian 3

This dataset is valuable because it contains several South Asian, Central Asian, Southeast Asian and Caucasian groups. However, it does not have a good SNP overlap with 23andme and the other datasets. It has only about 29,000 SNPs in common with 23andme v2 data. Combining HapMap, HGDP, SGVP, Behar et al and Xing et al with 23andme data leaves us with 25,000 SNPs. Due to that, I'll be using Xing et al data for only a few analyses.

Introduction

Posted by on January 19, 2011 5 comments

I have become interested (some would say obsessed) with genetics recently. I wrote about getting my DNA test done and there's a lot more about my own results that I plan to bore you with.

One fun application of genetic testing is inferring ancestry: Which ancestral group are you descended from? Can we estimate the admixture of the different population groups you are descended from?

Most DNA testing companies provide information about ancestry and genetic genealogy has taken off. With several genome databases (HapMap, HGDP, etc) and software (like plink, admixture, Structure) publicly available, the days of the genome bloggers are here. And I am trying to be the latest one.

In starting this project, I have been inspired by the Dodecad Ancestry Project by Dienekes Pontikos and Eurogenes Ancestry Project by David Wesolowski. The catalyst for this project was my friend Razib who I bug whenever I need to talk genetics.

What is Harappa Ancestry Project?
It is a project to analyze (autosomal) genetic data of participants of South Asian origin for the purpose of providing detailed ancestry information. So the focus of the project is on South Asians: Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans.

The project will collect 23andme raw genetic data from participants to better understand the ancestry relationships of different South Asian ethnicities.

I have named it after Harappa, an archaeological site of the Indus Valley Civilization in Punjab, Pakistan.

Participation
People of South Asian origin, or from neighboring countries, are eligible to participate. The list of countries of origin I am accepting are as follows:

  • Afghanistan
  • Bangladesh
  • Bhutan
  • Burma
  • India
  • Iran
  • Maldives
  • Nepal
  • Pakistan
  • Sri Lanka
  • Tibet

Right now, I am only accepting raw data samples from people who have tested with 23andme.

Please do not send samples from close relatives. I define close relatives as 2nd cousins or closer. If you have data from yourself and your parents, it might be better to send the samples from your parents (assuming they are not related to each other) and not send your own sample.

If you are unsure if you are eligible to participate, please send me an email (harappa@zackvision.com) to inquire about it before sending off your raw data.

What to send?
Please send your All DNA raw data text file (zipped is better) downloaded from 23andme to harappa@zackvision.com along with ancestral background information about you and all four of your grandparents. Background information would include where they were born, mother tongue, caste/community to which they belonged, etc. Please provide as much ancestry information as possible and try to be specific. Do especially include information about any ancestry from outside South Asia.

Data Privacy
The raw genetic data and ancestry information that you send me will not be shared with anyone.

Your data will be used only for ancestry analysis. No analysis of physical or health/medical traits will be performed.

The individual ancestry analysis published on this blog will be done using an ID of the form HRPnnnn known to only you and me.

What do you get?
All results of ancestry analysis (individual and group) will be posted on this blog under the Harappa Ancestry Project category. This will include admixture analysis as well as clustering into population groups etc.

I suggest you read about Dienekes' analysis on South Asians for an idea about what to expect.

You can access all blog posts related to this project from the Harappa Ancestry Project link on the navigation menu on every page of my website. You can also subscribe to the project feed.