HGM 2011 - Dubai, UAE
Maude E. Phipps - Abstract
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Maude E.Phipps
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The world’s oldest rainforests of approximately 400 million years ago can be found in Malaysia. Within these rich and verdant habitats dwell some of the last semi-normadic peoples of the South Esat Asian region, the Orang Asli (OA). Although the majority of population of Peninsular Malaysia comprise Chinese, Indians and Malays, it is these indigenous communities who are the descendents of the earliest migrants into this region. Collectively, the OA comprise a little over 0.5% of the population and can be divided into 3 large categories, and within these further sub-groupings based on languages, lifestyles and phenotypes. Working with some indigenous groups, in particular the Negritos, represents a challenge. They live very much in the interior, sometimes in restricted areas that require special police permits for access. Nevertheless, over the years, we have cultivated good working relationships with them. In line with our goals of elucidating genome variation in the various ethnic groups of Malaysia, we undertook a preliminary investigation of copy number variations (CNV) in the OA. We genotyped some 30 individuals from the Temuan, Mendriq and Jehai ethic groups. The Affy SNP 6.0 system that was utilized revealed some unique variants, predominantly in the form of large deletions, some exceeding 1 MB. Some of the variants were present in more than 1 ethnic group, while some appeared to be specific. We are currently proceeding to full investigations with more participants. |
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Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum |
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Human Genome Organisation |
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Centre for Arab Genomic Studies |
