Research capacity. Enabling the genomic revolution in Africa

Our understanding of genome biology, genomics, and disease, and even hu-man history, has advanced tremen-dously with the completion of the Human Genome Project. Technologi-cal advances coupled with significant cost reductions in genomic research have yielded novel insights into disease etiol-ogy, diagnosis, and therapy for some of the world's most intractable and devastat-ing diseases—including ma-laria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, cancer, and diabetes. Yet, de-spite the burden of infectious diseases and, more recently, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in Africa, Africans have only par-ticipated minimally in genomics research. Of the thousands of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) that have been conducted globally, only seven (for HIV susceptibility, malaria, tuberculosis, and podoconiosis) have been conducted exclusively on Afri-can participants; four others (for prostate cancer, obsessive compulsive disorder, and anthropometry) included some African participants (www.genome.gov/gwastudies/). As discussed in 2011 (www.h3africa.org), if the dearth of genomics research involving Africans persists, the potential health and economic benefits emanating from genomic science may elude an entire continent. The lack of large-scale genomics studies in Africa is the result of many deep-seated issues, including a shortage of African scien-tists with genomic research expertise, lack of biomedical research infrastructure, lim-ited computational expertise and resources, lack of adequate support for biomedical research by African governments, and the participation of many African scientists in collaborative research at no more than the level of sample collection. Overcoming these limitations will, in part, depend on African Enabling the genomic revolution in Africa By The H3Africa Consortium * H3Africa is developing capacity for health-related genomics research in Africa Yet, roughly a decade ago, newly pro-posed DNA-based taxonomy (11) promised to solve the species debate. A Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) (12) quickly emerged, seeking to provide a reliable, cost-effective solution to the problem of species identification (12) and a standard screening threshold of sequence differ-ence (10× average intraspecific difference) to speed the discovery of new animal spe-cies (13). Sometimes considered a "carica-ture of real taxonomy" (14), this approach failed to identify, perhaps not surprisingly, two American crow species and a number of members of the herring gull Larus ar-gentatus species assemblage above the set threshold (13). Furthermore, despite past (3) and present (6) sequencing projects, carrion crows and hooded crows can also not be differentiated from one another by means of DNA-barcode approaches. By contrast, Poelstra et al. show that much more DNA sequencing data are needed, combined with RNA expression data, to reconstruct the evolution of a reproductive barrier that culminated in the speciation of these two crow taxa. Armed with this new very detailed genetic informa-tion, it is clear that none of the currently formulated species concepts fully apply to these two crow taxa (unless one is willing relax some stringency in the various definitions). In-deed, the genomes of German carrion crows are much more similar to those of hooded crows than to Spanish car-rion crows. Put simply, apart from the few carrion crow type "speciation islands," German carrion crows could be con-sidered to represent hooded crows with a black (carrion crow) phenotype. There is a clear need for ad-ditional population genomic studies using a more dense sampling, especially among the fully black carrion crows, before the complexity of repro-ductive isolation and speciation among these two taxa can be fully understood. The specia-tion genomics strategy already proved itself in unraveling the complexities of mimicry among many Heliconius butterfly taxa (7) and, as in the study of Poelstra et al., stresses the im-portance of using RNA-based information in addition to DNA. Only time will tell if, and when, German carrion crows will adopt the "hooded phenotype," a fate that seems un-avoidable. Until then, we can only applaud these crows for defeating Linnaeus's curse.

Source: UG