Interviewee: Douglas Wallace. Mitochondrial DNA research pioneer Douglas Wallace speaks about the populations he samples and the direct application of the research. (DNAi Location: Applications > Human origins > Gene genealogy >Tracing ancestries > Studying indigenous populations)

We go to every population, and we do a complete genealogy of all the people that we're working with. And we only take the people in the genealogy that can trace their origins back to the original people in that area. So once you've defined then, the correct sample, the population sample, then you have to ask the population whether they would be willing to be tested, and what we find, amazingly enough, is that there are very few people that don't want to know about their origins. In fact, this seems to be a very common theme across the world, and people are very excited to participate, once they understand what we are trying to do. Moreover, we can explain to them, that by understanding some of this genetic variation that's unique to their ancestry, it also can give insights to some of the common clinical problems that they have in their population. So we have a direct clinical application to their needs.

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