source: www.gmanetwork.com
What's
your mix? Remember that infamous advertising campaign a few months ago, which
raised the ire of the Philippine public?
Extolling the virtues of Filipinos who were "mixed"
—part-Filipino, part something else— it was really meant to be a celebration of
diversity, but many saw it as praising the part-foreign among us.
At
that time, someone asked me what I thought, and I remember being puzzled. You
see, genetically I have no idea what it means to be "Filipino".
What
is 'Filipino'?
We
are proud of our heritage at the rim of East Asia, the meeting point of the
many Asian groups, as well as Europeans from Spain. Our culture even 100 years
ago was already a mix —of Malay, Chinese, Hindu, Arab, Polynesian and Spanish,
with maybe some English, Japanese and African thrown in. And it shows up in our genes.
The
genome is the complete set of DNA that carries the instructions on how to make
a living being. Genomes change and these
changes tell us how life evolves. The genome sequence —the strings of the 4
letters of the DNA code in our bodies— provides the instructions on how to
build the organism, and as they evolve the organism also evolves, sometimes
into new species.
In
the last few years, genome technologies have exploded to the point that it has
become routine to sequence my genome or your genome or the genome of many
different species looks like.
Looking
inward
I
was curious about myself. I wanted to
see who I was (and as a Filipino who we are) by looking into my own genetic
code. I did not sequence my own genome but by using a 500,000 "SNP
chip", I was able to get a genetic readout of who I was by looking at a
part of my entire genome.
And
here you find my mix. I had European and
Asian genes in the nucleus, my Y-chromosome was likely Chinese while my
mitochondrial DNA probably came from Taiwan.
And
here lies the answer to that infamous question.
'We
are all mixes'
We
are all mixes, and I think every Filipino who is genetically tested will show
up as a mix.
We
are products of what we evolutionary genomicists call genetic admixture, the
result of several thousand years of mixing in our island archipelago at the
edge of the Pacific. We were always
getting genes from everyone who came to our shores. We are, in a genetic sense, a truly global
people.
The
Filipino story
The
story of Filipinos, where we came from and how we came to be who we are as a
people, is partly written in our DNA.
The new tools of genomics are revolutionizing the study of human
history, by tracing our genetic ancestors and seeing what makes up our genomes. It took a worldwide effort 10 years and
nearly P120 B to sequence the human genome.
Today, I sit at my lab a few feet away at New York University from a
sequencing machine that can do it in 10 days for about P120,000.
The
Filipino genome
It
is time we sequence the Filipino genome.
A Filipino Genome Diversity Project can be launched at the newly
established Philippine Genome Center, and I think for the price of a small
house we can begin to unlock the secrets of our genes.
The
ability to sequence our genomes will revolutionize not only how we see
ourselves, but how we treat our diseases. Genetic testing has been widespread
over the last few decades, and we can now reliably test for increased risk in
many genetic diseases. Doctors are now routinely
sequencing the genomes of cancer cells from their patients to figure out
quickly what has gone wrong and help in developing better ways to cure
them.
Any
volunteers? — TJD, GMA News
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