Genome Hacker Uncovers 13-Million-Member Family Tree

52462425 story Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 29, 2013 @08:00PM from the turns-out-several-million-people-married-their-cousins dept. ananyo writes "Using data pulled from online genealogy sites, a renowned 'genome hacker' has constructed what is likely the biggest family tree ever assembled. The researcher and his team now plan to use the data including a single uber-pedigree comprising 13 million individuals, which stretches back to the 15th century to analyze the inheritance of complex genetic traits, such as longevity and facial features. In addition to providing the invitation list to what would be the world's largest family reunion, the work presented by computational biologist Yaniv Erlich at the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting in Boston could provide a new tool for understanding the extent to which genes contribute to certain traits. The pedigrees have been made available to other researchers, but Erlich and his team at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have stripped the names from the data to protect privacy." You may like to read: Post

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Genome Hacker Uncovers 13-Million-Member Family Tree