This is not an attempt to raise an alarm. Instead, I try here to bring to the notice of fellow compatriots of a certain ongoing research with the capacity to cause some mischief. I was at my university alumnus meet (seminar) in Belgium recently and during the course of the event, a certain alumnus from Zimbabwe presented her current research entitled Establishing a Biobank of African populations. 

In general, the main objective of such research was to collect biological information (from blood samples) on tribal African populations with a view to establishing differences in the DNAs of these people. DNA will be isolated from the collected blood samples. The DNA will be sequenced and then aligned and compared, population against population. This comparative alignment will then show regions of the DNA which differ in their nucleotide (the building blocks of the DNA) sequences among the populations. In Molecular Biology terms, these differences are referred to as small nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). According to the alumnus, blood samples were collected from West Africa (Nigeria) East Africa (Ethiopia and Kenya) and Southern Africa (Zimbabwe).

Being Nigerian, I took the fellow to task and she was able to disclose that blood samples were taken from Nigerian populations from Yoruba land, Igbo land and Hausa land, apparently reflecting the big ethnic groups in the country. According to her, she was helped in this task by some Nigerians who took her team around these areas. From further prodding, I could establish that no permission was taken from regulatory agencies in Nigeria and the Nigerian blood donors were not well-informed about the consequences of the exercise.

The main worry here is that such research is capable of exposing hitherto hidden, but all the same very serious genetic defects among our populations. The social consequence may be that such revelation might pitch one group against the other. Imagine where it becomes established that populations of Nigerian tribe ‘A’ have a SNP in their DNA, leading to genetic disorder ‘B’ (for example, a hereditary disease). Imagine at the same time that this SNP is not present in tribe ‘X’, so that members of ‘X’ do not suffer from disease ‘B’. As you can imagine, this has the potential to affect relationships between members of tribes A and X, including marriage relationships.

As many human diseases have a genetic (DNA) basis, I tried to work my mind to recall if there are any diseases suffered by the Igbo and not the Yoruba/ Hausa, or the Hausa and not the Igbo/Yoruba, or the Yoruba and not the Igbo/Hausa. I became shocked at the possibility of this realisation. This is what this research will expose further, to the detriment of the ‘unlucky tribe(s)’. I hope someone will alert concerned regulatory agencies in Nigeria.

Nevertheless, a positive aspect of SNPs is that they are of current interest in drug manufacturing and administration in that they play a role in differences in susceptibility or resistance to disease causing agents. Simply put, due to the presence or absence of SNPs, certain people will respond well to certain drugs, while others will respond poorly to the same drugs. SNPs inhibit the mechanism of action of many drugs, as the active sites of these drugs will not find the right specific nucleotides to bind and begin to work. Therefore, with knowledge of SNPs, drugs can be designed based on specific populations.

Robot  # 1 | 20.02.2008 10:30

As many human diseases have a genetic (DNA) basis, I tried to work my mind to recall if there are ...Read the full article.