Genetic Blind Spots

By Constance B Hilliard

Key components of health are hidden in the neglected African genome.

This Article From Issue

July-August 2021

Volume 109, Number 4

Page 198

DOI: 10.1511/2021.109.4.198

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In December 2020, an article appeared in the Journal of Global Health titled: “COVID-19 Pandemic: The African Paradox.” Its authors observed that although models had projected an exponential rate of transmission of the disease on the African continent, case fatalities there remained remarkably low. By late February 2021, the COVID-19 death count in the United States had surpassed 500,000, whereas the total fatalities for the entire continent of Africa, whose population is four times that of the United States, had reached just 100,000.

*Homo sapiens* began migrating around the globe between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago, but the majority of our species’ genetic diversity still resides in Africa. Populations in Europe, Asia, and the Americas lost pieces of ancestral gene variants as they adapted to their new environments, but Africans retain the full range. Consequently, studies such as the Human Genome Project, which primarily collected data from Western participants, are missing key aspects of human development.

**Darryl Leja, Courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute**

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