Paris (AFP)
Africa is the continent which presents the greatest genetic diversity, but is the great forgotten one of the sequencing of the human genome, notes a scientist in the journal Nature, which defends a project to fill this gap, in the name of medical research.
Twenty years ago, in February 2001, the first human DNA sequencing ("Human Genome Project") was published, a vast mapping of the genetic code, after more than a decade of research involving hundreds of scientists. worldwide.
This first complete "reading" of a human genome, which carries all of our genetic information, allowed important advances in the understanding of the role of genes in the fundamental mechanisms of life and diseases, and opened up new perspectives medical treatment.
But Africa is largely absent from the project: of the genomes of more than a million people that have been sequenced so far, less than 2% are Africans or of recent African descent, notes the professor of genetics Ambroise Wonkam. , in a comment posted this week in Nature.
The cradle of humanity, the African continent is by far the one with the most genetic diversity and therefore represents immense research potential.
Hence the project to sequence the genome of 3 million Africans, "selected across the continent, within different regions and ethnolinguistic groups", developed Prof. Wonkam, of the University of Sciences of Cape Town in South Africa. .
This project called "3MAG" would take about a decade and would cost 4.5 million dollars (3.7 million euros) per year, funded mainly by African governments, but also by international organizations, suggests the researcher.
The aim is to embrace the full spectrum of genetic variations on the continent and to have a more representative genetic database, "for the benefit of all humans and to ensure equitable access to genetic medicine".
These genes so varied would help to better understand certain mutations at the origin of specific pathologies, and to find new treatments, defends Professor Wonkam.
As an example, he cites a variant of the PCSK9 gene, correlated with an excessively high concentration of lipids in the blood (at the origin of cardiovascular diseases), which could be identified because it was 200 times more widespread among the African American population than among the European population.
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