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Originally Posted by AKA_Monet
Well, actually, you do have both a SNP database and a hapmap that geographically designates populations of people. The point of this information is it is not individual--it is "population based". The genes themselves are not coding for anything, they are just EST's, non-coding regions, junk DNA, or RFLP's. It is the polymorphisms that are being compared from 1 million to 1 million, genome wide and cM or entire chromosome comparisons.
For instances, as I understand it, at the 21 chromosome the break to form 3 chromosomes is not ALWAYS in the same place for every child that has Down's. Most of the time it is. But it is that inherited changes that actually does not cause mutations in the parent, eventually getting to the child. Or the mutations are epigenetic which is begininng to modulate genes different from our understanding.
No, Homo sapiens sapiens are not genetically different, meaning all our genes are in the same place and where they should be. But we have high variation on how our genes are "spelled". And the similarities vs. the differences are being compared on an evolutionary level.
We are finding that the more different a genome is from another the older the group is in the population that shares similarities with those in Africa. Like they just found this guy who is related to Genghis Khan genome... They did a Y-chromosome spread.
For women, they do a mitochondrial spread.
I was going to send off my DNA to be sequenced and see what I could find... It's about $200+
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I'm so far away from the basic genetics lessons taught in Freshman Bio, but amazingly I understood this, thanks a bunch. I've considered getting tested myself. Since you seem to have a much better understanding of the actual science of it, is there a center you would recommend?