Genetic Variation MapResearchers at the University of Michigan have produced the most detailed study of human genetic variation to date. The high-resolution genome scan of population genetic variation characterizes more than 500,000 DNA markers in the human genome and examines variations across 29 populations in five continents.

It’s sometimes possible to trace a person’s ancestry to an individual population within a geographic region. While previous studies have found that broad-scale geographic ancestry could be successfully traced, the new results indicate that it’s becoming increasingly possible to use genomics to refine the geographic position of an individual’s ancestors with more and more precision.

Human genetic diversity decreases as distance from Africa—the cradle of humanity—increases. People of African descent are more genetically diverse than Middle Easterners, who are more diverse than Asians and Europeans. Native Americans possess the least-diverse genomes. As a result, searching for disease-causing genes should require the fewest number of genetic markers among Native Americans and the greatest number of markers among Africans.

Read more about this project at the University of Michigan website. The results are being made available on publicly shared databases.

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