The Genographic Project
[ Posted by Urban Hafner ]
The first time I heard of the Genographic Project was in the podcast of the talk by Kris Lichter on IT Conversations. It’s a cooperation of IBM and National Geographic. What they are trying is to find out how the human race migrated from Africa across the world. For that they are using genetic markers from indigenous people around the world.
But what makes it interesting is that everybody can participate. You just buy a kit from national geographic, send back your DNA and they analyze it. When the analysis is finished you can find your results on their website. Of course totally anonymous, or so they say. With the money for the kit you payed for the genetic analysis of your DNA and also support some projects to help indigenous people. Maybe that’s why the kit costs $100 (plus $26.50 shipping outside of America) or if the analyses are just that expensive.
After carefully reading the website I finally couldn’t manage to resist any longer. So I ordered the kit and I’m really looking forward to receiving it and to find out what haplogroup I am. And apart from that the project is just cool :)
