Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Keywords
Genome, Race, Ethnicity, Ancestry, Ancestry informative markers, Ancestry haplotype, Admixture, Health disparity
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Human Genomics
Volume
9
Issue
1
Abstract
This review explores the limitations of self-reported race, ethnicity, and genetic ancestry in biomedical research. Various terminologies are used to classify human differences in genomic research including race, ethnicity, and ancestry. Although race and ethnicity are related, race refers to a person’s physical appearance, such as skin color and eye color. Ethnicity, on the other hand, refers to communality in cultural heritage, language, social practice, traditions, and geopolitical factors. Genetic ancestry inferred using ancestry informative markers (AIMs) is based on genetic/genomic data. Phenotype-based race/ethnicity information and data computed using AIMs often disagree. For example, self-reporting African Americans can have drastically different levels of African or European ancestry. Genetic analysis of individual ancestry shows that some self-identified African Americans have up to 99% of European ancestry, whereas some self-identified European Americans have substantial admixture from African ancestry. Similarly, African ancestry in the Latino population varies between 3% in Mexican Americans to 16% in Puerto Ricans. The implication of this is that, in African American or Latino populations, self-reported ancestry may not be as accurate as direct assessment of individual genomic information in predicting treatment outcomes. To better understand human genetic variation in the context of health disparities, we suggest using “ancestry” (or biogeographical ancestry) to describe actual genetic variation, “race” to describe health disparity in societies characterized by racial categories, and “ethnicity” to describe traditions, lifestyle, diet, and values. We also suggest using ancestry informative markers for precise characterization of individuals’ biological ancestry. Understanding the sources of human genetic variation and the causes of health disparities could lead to interventions that would improve the health of all individuals.
Department
Department of Biology
Original Publication Date
2015
DOI of published version
10.1186/s40246-014-0023-x
Repository
UNI ScholarWorks, University of Northern Iowa, Rod Library
Date Digital
2015
Copyright
©2015 Tesfaye B. Mersha and Tilahun Abebe. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Language
EN
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Mersha, Tesfaye B. and Abebe, Tilahun, "Self-reported race/ethnicity in the age of genomic research: its potential impact on understanding health disparities" (2015). Faculty Publications. 24.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/bio_facpub/24
Comments
First published in Human Genomics, v. 9 n. 1 (2015), 15 pages, published by BioMed Central Ltd. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40246-014-0023-x