A background check for human posterity
Actor Ben Affleck already has his every move scrutinized by celebrity-crazed fans. Now the public will be able to take a peek at his genes, too.
Affleck is one of about 20 local luminaries, including Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, who have volunteered to have their cheeks swabbed for DNA as part of an international effort to better understand ancient human migration.
Scientists involved in the Genographic Project are using genetic mutations to map how a person's ancestors traveled from Africa, where human life originated, to locations around the world. They are then plugging results from hundreds of thousands of people into a database that could help anthropologists explain everything from how agriculture developed in the Americas to when the first modern humans colonized the Arctic.
The project is also teaching local boldface names some surprising information about their far-flung forebears. Marshall Leonard, a midfielder for Major League Soccer's New England Revolution, traveled the world with his military family and later as a player on the US under-17 national team. But the African-American from Georgia never expected to discover that his roots trace back to Finland and Asia.
"People from Finland don't look anything like my father, so this was interesting to see," he said.
While genetics may be the science of the future, the genome also serves as a historical document that can help explain the past, said Spencer Wells, the population geneticist leading the project.
"It's the only tool that can tell us about some of most basic questions, like when did people arrive on various continents, and how did we create the incredible linguistic diversity we see in the world," he said.
Wells will speak about his research Friday at 7 p.m. at the Museum of Science.
His team took the cells contributed by Leonard and others and sifted out pieces of genetic material known as mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomes, which remain relatively unchanged from generation to generation.
By scanning thousands of links in the DNA chain, scientists can find places where the sequence is altered. People who share the same mutations belong to the same branch on the tree of humanity, known as a haplogroup, which started thousands of years ago when a single ancestor split off from the larger clan.
Individuals can pay $99.95 at nationalgeographic.com/genographic for a test kit. The money raised will fund the collection of samples from indigenous populations like Basques and Alaskan natives.
While some saw the project as a chance to learn more about their heritage, others took the opportunity to ponder deeper truths about the human race. Lockhart said the mapping illustrates the common roots that all humans share.
"In music we always talk about a universal language - you hear a minor chord and it sounds sad," he said. "There's a reason for that, and part of the reason is that despite the total disparity of appearance and cultural norms, we all came from the same place."
The project also inspired reflections on Africa, birthplace of the first modern humans, whom researchers nicknamed Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. Because groups that have been around longer have developed more variation, there is more genetic diversity in the average African village than in the rest of the world outside Africa combined, Wells said.
"We tend to group all black people in one group," said Dr. Paula Johnson, chief of women's health at Brigham and Women's Hospital, who also had her DNA tested. In fact, she said, people who share a physical trait can have dramatically different genes.
Mish Michaels, a meteorologist for WBZ-TV who was born in India, said the test confirmed her suspicions that her fair-haired mother, who was adopted, had European roots. But what struck her the most was the way humans had scurried around the globe in response to changes in the climate.
"Here is confirmation that it's all about the weather; I guess that's good job security for me," she joked.
Affleck's results were not available at press time.
As with any other test, the project did lead to some bragging rights. Ramiro Torres, who hosts a morning show on radio station Jam'n 94.5, was pleased to learn his enterprising relatives trekked across all of Asia before crossing the ice bridge and populating North and South America.
"I just want to give a big shoutout to haplogroup A and let anybody else know we are the best," he said. "I don't care if you're the mayor, or a soccer player, or Ben Affleck - unless you are in my group, you are nobody." 