Researchers at Columbia University recently published an analysis of two large population SNP libraries which contained samples from hundreds of thousands of people. With these datasets, the researchers have identified a number of alleles which vary significantly within the sampled population by age. These results infer that some form of selection is on-going in the population, resulting in the changing allele frequency. What will we discover when we start looking at gene libraries containing full genomes of hundreds of thousands? Will we be able to make population wide predictions? What type of protections will people have about their own genetic information? Advancing technologies and plummeting costs will make this field very interesting in the decades to come.
Detection of Continued Human Evolution?
