New Delhi, September 25: Endogamy, the custom of marrying within one’s caste or community leads to gene mutation and thereby to the concentration of certain diseases in a particular pocket of the population in India, says a research study based on genetic analysis.
The scientists at Center or Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad told the media that the study they conducted together with US researchers has both medical and historical implications. The US researchers were from Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.
Dr. Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Senior Scientist at CCMB said, “The widespread history of founder effects helps explain why incidence of genetic diseases among Indians is different from the rest of the world.” Founder effects are explained as the fact that many groups in modern India descended from a small number of founding individuals, and have since been genetically isolated from other groups.
A report of the research published in Nature magazine establishes that all diverse groups now one can see in India came from two major ancient and genetically divergent populations namely Ancestral North Indians (ANI) and the Ancestral South Indians (ASI). ANI group is genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans while ASI has no affinity to any external group.
Contrary to the popular notion that India’s modern day caste system is a creation of colonialism, the study found scientific evidence to show that many current distinctions among groups are ancient. However, the researchers, in the paper, sound a word of caution that models in population genetics are oversimplifications.
Apart from Dr Thangaraj, other CCMB scientists Veena K Patnaik, its former director Lalji Singh attended the press conference convened to disclose the findings of the study.
—Agencies