Whites Genetically Weaker Than Blacks, Study Finds

White Americans are both genetically weaker and less diverse than their black compatriots, a Cornell University-led study finds.

Analyzing the genetic makeup of 20 Americans of European ancestry and 15 African-Americans, researchers found that the former showed much less variation among 10,000 tested genes than did the latter, which was expected.

They also found that Europeans had many more possibly harmful mutations than did African, which was a surprise.

It's been known for years that all non-Africans are descended from a small group, perhaps only a few dozen individuals, who left the continent between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago.

But the Cornell study, published in the journal Nature Thursday, indicates that Europeans went through a second "population bottleneck," probably about 30,000 years ago, when the ancestral population was again reduced to relatively few in number.

The doubly diluted genetic diversity has allowed "bad" mutations to build up in the European population, something that the more genetically varied African population has had more success in weeding out.

"What we may be seeing is a 'population genetic echo' of the founding of Europe," said Bustamante.

The Cornell team hopes to study other population groups in search of similar results. As would be expected with the "out of Africa" theory, the researchers found Africans had the greatest amount of genetic diversity, followed in turn by Middle Easterners, then Europeans and South Asians at about equal levels, then East Asians.

Native Americans had the least genetic diversity of all, indicating that part of the world was settled last

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