Maori alarm at gene project

An ambitious project to trace the origins and movements of the human race through blood samples from indigenous peoples is setting off alarm bells among Maori.

The "Genographic Project", launched this month by National Geographic and IBM, aims to tell the human story through 100,000 DNA samples from between 1000 and 2000 ethnic groups around the world.

It will also provide personalised migratory histories of the ancestors of anyone who sends in a scrape of tissue from inside their mouths for US$99.95 ($137) plus postage.

But the US-based Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism has called for an international boycott against the magazine, IBM and Gateway Computers, whose founders are helping fund the project.

Wanganui researcher Dr Cherryl Smith, who resigned from the Bioethics Council last year just before it issued a controversial report endorsing putting human genes into other organisms, is quoted on the council's website as saying that indigenous peoples now have extensive networks opposing "biopiracy".

Dr Paul Reynolds of Auckland University's Maori research centre, Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, urged Maori to boycott the project because it implied that people's origins could be traced in their genes.

"This type of research is colonisation as usual," he said.

"Indigenous people will be saying we already have our stories about our origins, so we don't need a scientific rationale to justify our origins.

"And of course the collection of DNA through blood samples goes against our view of the body as tapu, or sacred, which also leads on to the misuse of the body and body parts by some researchers."

Genographic Project director Dr Spencer Wells, a 36-year-old scientist and film maker from Texas, said the five-year project aimed to fill in gaps in the patchy story of how human beings spread around the globe.

Although homo sapiens are believed to have evolved in Africa perhaps 200,000 years ago, recent evidence suggests that the species almost went extinct when a huge volcano erupted in Sumatra in the depths of the last Ice Age about 70,000 years ago, inducing a "nuclear winter" effect.

"The population dropped to about 2000 individuals," Dr Wells said.

"There was a leap forward in intelligence that we see in the fossil and archaeological record about that time, and we think there was strong selection operating. Those that survived were clever enough to travel and leave Africa."

Some time around 60,000 years ago, the first humans ventured out through Suez into Asia. Genetic tests indicate that all living men carry Y chromosomes inherited from one man who lived around that time, and all living women carry mitochondrial DNA inherited through the female line from one woman who lived in the same era.

Scientists, naturally, have dubbed the two ancestors "Adam" and "Eve", although they were not necessarily partners and may not even have lived at the same time.

Tentative evidence suggests one wave of migrants moved gradually, over many generations, across South Asia and into Australia some time between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago, before moving on to other land areas.

Dr Wells, who traced the descendants of Genghis Khan through identifying segments of his Y chromosome to people now living in northern Pakistan, said the genetic differences between the various existing human races were tiny.

"We are 99.9 per cent identical. There is only one nucleotide base [DNA fragment] in every 1000 that is different between people who are unrelated. That is a very low level of variation compared with other primates."

But Wellington lawyer Moana Jackson said indigenous peoples should question the project's motives.

"I'm sure part of it will be to try to strengthen some of the existing theories about the arrival of indigenous peoples in various countries, and that has a sordid history because it has been used to diminish indigenous rights," he said.

Ajay Royyuru, IBM's lead scientist on the project, was optimistic on the issue.

"We want to attract their participation by being extremely clear about what we do and do not do. For example, we are very clear about not trying to exploit their genetic diversity for medical uses," he told the BBC News website.

The Project

* A five-year, $55 million study will gather DNA samples from more than 100,000 people worldwide to help piece together a picture of how the Earth was colonised.

* Samples gathered from indigenous people and the public will be analysed in laboratories and by computers to collect genetic data and map the history of human migration using DNA.

* The privately funded project involves National Geographic, IBM and the Waitt Family Foundation charity, headed by Gateway computer co-founder Ted Wiatt.