The human genome project and molecular anthropology.

It has been -10 years since the idea of determining the complete nucleotide sequence of the human genome was first proposed as a "big-science" project to the scientific community at the 1986 meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on the molecular biology of Homo sapiens (Bodmer 1986). The ensuing decade has seen the realization of this goal as a worthy endeavor, and an enormous amount of progress has been made in developing new technologies and in determining a physical map of the genome. It appears as if the Human Genome Project (HGP) is now in the home stretch, with the consensus emerging that everything is in place to determine the sequence itself (Marshall and Pennisi 1996). Although the HGP was initially promoted on the basis of what the resulting knowledge would contribute to efforts to alleviate human misery caused (or contributed to) by our genes, the purpose of this paper is to preview what a complete human DNA sequence might mean for molecular anthropology. Molecular anthropology is defined here as the use of molecular genetic techniques to address questions that anthropologists are interested in concerning human evolution and diversity. Molecular anthropology encompasses the analysis and interpretation of the following: (1) patterns of molecular genetic variation in various contemporary human populations; (2) patterns of molecular genetic variation in nonhuman primate populations; (3) comparisons of human and nonhuman primate genes; and (4) the retrieval of genetic information directly from ancient specimens. The purpose of this article is not to review the present state of molecular anthropology, as that has been ably done in several recent edited volumes (Boyce and Mascie-Taylor 1996; Chadwick and Cardew 1996; Jackson et al. 1996). Rather, what follows is a speculative preview of what the HGP might contribute to molecular anthropology. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been used extensively by molecular anthropologists, and the