Sent: Monday, April 24, 2000 10:59 AM
Subject: DNA Can Link Americans to Africa Kin


> DNA Can Link Americans to Africa Kin
> WASHINGTON (AP) --
>
> A team of geneticists at Howard University plans to
> offer a DNA test this summer that could link black
> Americans with their roots in Africa.
>
> Geneticist Rick Kittles said today that he is still
> preparing the database for the comparisons, but expected
> the program to get under way in a few months.
>
> There has been wide interest in this means of tracing
> people back to their homelands, he said, commenting that
> he has done DNA tests on ''several hundred'' people in
> preparing for the program.
>
> Historical records are pretty consistent in showing the
> early slaves came from west central Africa, he said,
> locations of the current countries of Ghana, Nigeria,
> Sierra Leone and Angola.
>
> In Boston, Richard Newman of Harvard University's W.E.B.
> DuBois Institute for African-American Research,
> said: ''It doesn't mean anything to know that some of my
> people came from Africa, but if I can pinpoint a
> culture, a religion and language, then it can strengthen
> my sense of identity and relationship with Africa.''
>
> The Howard University group would use a blood test that
> matches DNA sequences to samples taken from native
> African populations. The test could cost up to $300.
>
> Kittles, the 34-year-old geneticist at Howard who
> initiated the study, said the slave trade erased family
> histories, and, before the discovery of DNA, nobody
> imagined that the stories could be rewritten.
>
> ''To a lot of blacks, knowing a little bit of the story
> is important,'' Kittles told The Boston Globe. ''This
> will definitely contribute a lot to understanding the
> history of African-Americans.''
>
> Kittles said Howard University will be able to do two
> versions of the DNA test. The first looks at
> mitochondrial DNA, which is handed down, unchanged, from
> mother to child. The other uses the male, or Y
> chromosome, which is passed on from father to son.
>
> Researchers then can compare test subjects with a
> database of more than 2,000 samples assembled from about
> 40 populations across western Africa, where the trans-
> Atlantic slave trade originated.
>
> Kittles said his team is collecting additional DNA
> samples so they can expand the database and identify
> more African populations. The researchers also have
> collected a separate database with American Indian,
> Asian and European DNA to cross-reference genes that
> cannot be traced to Africa.
>
> The geneticists said DNA tests in the study so far show
> that about 30 percent of the black men tested descended
> from Europeans on the fathers' side. The researchers
> said that was largely the legacy of enslaved women who
> were raped.
>
>
>
>  AP-NY-04-24-00 1133EDT<
>
> Copyright © Associated Press. All rights reserved
>

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