Anacortes Senior College

Welcome to Anthropological Genetics

“In diversity there is beauty and there is strength” (Maya Angelou).  “Diversity is the engine for culture” (Robert Redford).  “Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences” (Gorbachev).  “By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and culture, progress weakens life and favors death” (Octavio Paz).  Without diversity among and between human populations we cannot adapt, evolve and survive.\

Survival is found in the ongoing dance of genetics, culture, and environment.  Here we are learning the steps of that dance.  Genes may control our sensitivity, flexibility, and capacity to respond to different environments, but environmental factors themselves actually cause great variation of gene expression.  We recognize that environmental effects modified traits in human diversity through varying generational exposures. Those modifications are sex-specific and vulnerable to the timing of exposure.

Today’s human phenotypes represent the sum of many gene- by-environmental interactions over the life-course and increasingly complex interventions stimulated by modernization. These interventions looked like a good idea at the time.  However, research now identifies many of their effects as problematic to the health of following generations. We will discuss today’s diversity in populations and how understanding that is so important.

Instructor: MJ Mosher

MJ blends experience from diverse professional careers. She served as a clinical nurse in Denver, as a researcher through a Postdoctoral Fellowship at National Heart,Lung and Blood Institute, University of North Carolina, and as a professor in anthropological genetics and nutrition at Western Washington University. She served as principal investigator in population studies with the Buryat of Siberia and Mennonite of Central Kansas, and additionally participating in studies with the Russian Old Believers in Oregon and indigenous populations of the Amazonian region of northern Peru.

All studies examined the relationships among diet, genetics/epigenetics and biomarkers of energy balance, obesity, and cholesterol. MJ believes that teaching is a two-way experience, with teacher and students (or study participants) learning from each other.