India, genomically speaking!

We have heard time and again about the diversity that is India, and the unity that makes us Indians. Here is a review of a project called Indian Genome Variation database from the IGV Consortium. From their review article, I understand that the four major morphological types of the Indian population is Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, and Negrito; and, linguistically, the four major language families are, apparently Indo-European, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and Astro-Asiatic. The two maps of India delineating the regions of these different morphological and linguistic types are worth taking a look at. The ultimate aim of this project is

'to create a DNA variation database of the people of India and make it available to researchers for understanding human biology with respect to disease predisposition, adverse drug reaction, population migration etc'.

The review also discusses some of the ethical issued involved and the data release policy. An article worth taking a look at.