UNT TRANSDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON ANCESTRAL GENOMICS

We are pleased to announce the opening of Registration for the April 17-18, 2020 UNT Transdisciplinary Conference on Ancestral Genomics. This Inaugural two-day Conference will launch an annual 5 year series, bringing together leaders in the fields of ancestral genomics, evolutionary history, nutrition and other relevant fields as they relate to underrepresented populations.  The April 2020 meeting will focus on testing new theoretical models developed to lend insights into "paradoxes" in the medical literature relating to six disease susceptibilities in African-Americans of slave descent.  Future meetings will use these innovative methodologies to tackle the role of ancestral genomics and disease susceptibilities in global populations as well as underrepresented demographic groups in the U.S., which include Latinos/Hispanics and Native Americans.  The upcoming forum will also bring together specialists from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation,  National Library of Medicine, the Cooperative Human Tissue Network, the Food and  Nutrition Board, Precision Medicine and the National Center for Biotechnology Information to educate our research community on industry standards for ancestral genomic approaches.  Workshops will be set up to establish collaborations for future research directed at our goal of diminishing the one-size-fits-all approach to human genomics.  These sessions will also address a range of issues. including the authentication of ancestral cell lines, improved methods in bioinformatics data-gathering, ancestral adaptations to diverse nutritional environments, and effective methods for recruiting underrepresented populations to participate in medical studies.

What is Ancestral Genomics?

​The Challenge

 A crisis exists in the Genomics and Precision Medicine field generated by new but counterintuitive discoveries regarding the nature of human genetic diversity.  While race may be useful in a socio-cultural context, it has no basis in science.  Human populations are adapted to the unique ecologies of the genetic niches they inhabit.  African-Americans of slave descent carry a different genomic profile than Nigerian-Americans and may as a consequence have different disease susceptibilities.  While West and East Africans may be shoved into the same "Black" racial classification, the former will have gene variants or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs)  that provide some level of natural immunity to malaria along with a susceptibility to sickle cell anemia but the latter will not. Ancestral Genomics is recognizing the medical value of identifying "genetic niche populations", rather than clustering humans into amorphous and sometimes misleading racial categories.  However, Ancestral Genomics is also a concept that recognizes the deficiencies in taking a so-called colorblind approach to medicine.  While well-intentioned, it usually leads to a one-size-fits-all paradigm, in which populations of European ancestry are universalized and their specific genomic traits misapplied to all other populations.  This happens frequently because at the present time approximately 81% of the European genome has been studied, but only 3% of the African genome. Thus identifying disease-triggering variants in underrepresented populations is more difficult since the same disease symptoms may be expressed with different gene variants in different genetic populations.  Ancestral genomics is bypassing race to study humans at the level of their ancestral populations.


The Questions We Should be Asking Ourselves

New questions arise when we examine underrepresented populations in their ancestral context.  This inaugural Conference will focus on African-Americans of slave ancestry and develop models, which can become the focus of subsequent conferences in this series. Some of the most pressing issues related to African-American health disparities that this meeting will explore relate to:

• How should racial classifications be used in genomic medicine?   African-Americans of slave origins possess an admixture profile that is on average 75%  interior-Niger-Kordofanian West African DNA, 24% Northern European DNA and 1% Native American DNA.  They do not carry the same genomic profile as Nigerian-Americans, who are of predominantly coastal-Niger-Kordanian ancestry.  And yet, they are both categorized as belonging to the same race.  Given the growing accuracy of  DNA testing, can or should ancestry be used in place of racial categories?

• What are the most cost effective and medically beneficial fix to diversifying the reference genome an approach that regularly adds patches of non-European populations to it?  Or, if the goal is reducing the number of genetic variants in non-Europeans that are tagged “rare” or VUS (Variants of Unknown Significance) should more emphasis be placed on identifying discrete ancestral genomes, which recognize the genomic adaptations of diverse ancestral populations to their unique environmental niches?

• How should genomic medicine grapple with the fact that different sets of genetic variants or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs)  trigger what appear to be the same traits or diseases in different genetic populations?  (Europeans share one trigger for lactase non-persistence, Tanzanians have a different one, and their Kenyan neighbors have another one altogether).

• What role should the African genome play in medical research since it carries the full range of human genetic variation and thus contains within it the possibility of disease breakthroughs that might benefit the entire human species?  (Were HeLa cells unique in their immortality or a harbinger of other discoveries yet to be made in the unexplored African ancestral genome?)    

• Does the One-Size-Fits-All or colorblind approach to medical research silently racialize Europeans by universalizing their genomes and applying it to all human populations? 

• Are African-Americans more susceptible to TRPV6-expressing cancers ((Metastatic Prostate Cancer, Triple Negative Breast Cancer, Colorectal Cancer, Ovarian Cancer) than other U.S. demographics?  If so is the ancestral TRPV6a calcium ion channel variant the culprit?

• Is the TRPV6a variant more calcium absorbent than the derived (European) TRPV6b variant? If so, might overexposure to free calcium ions trigger a higher susceptibility to TRPV6-expressing cancers in populations who carry the ancestral TRPV6a variant?

• Do all humans have the same dietary calcium needs?  The Niger-Kordofanian West Africans consume 200-300 mg/calcium/day but have minimal rates of osteoporosis.  Americans of Northern European origin consume 1000-1200 mg/calcium/day, but are at high risk of fragile bone diseases.  Could high calcium consumption trigger potential malignancies or preeclampsia in childbirth for African-Americans and other populations who have strong bones despite a lower than USDA-required calcium intake?  Should U.S. calcium intake be stratified by ancestry rather than based on a one-size-fits-all model? 

• In order to avoid misdiagnosing African-Americans with kidney disease, U.S. laboratories have added a correction factor to this genetic population’s eGFR score. Should other biological values be stratified by ancestry in order to provide a more accurate picture of health in a particular population?

• Do all humans have the same dietary sodium needs?  The Niger-Kordofanian ancestors of African-Americans inhabit the sodium-deficient interior of West Africa.  They are genetically adapted to consuming 200-300 mg/day/sodium, levels that would be too low even to meet the survival needs of coastal West Africans.  Does transition from a low-sodium ancestral diet to the current 3400 mg/sodium/day intake trigger salt-sensitive hypertension and kidney failure in African-Americans? Should U.S. sodium intake be stratified by ancestry rather than based on a one-size-fits-all model.

• What advances are being made in ethnopharmacology that may be of special benefit to African-Americans?