Welcome to People of the British Isles Did you know that historical patterns of people’s movements, from Anglo-Saxon invasions to those of the Vikings and Normans, may have an impact on 21st Century medical science?
We have been given funding by the Wellcome Trust to collect blood samples from 3,500 people from rural populations throughout the British Isles. These will be used to look at the patterns of differences in people’s genetic make up around the UK. The project will have two purposes, the first to help medical research, and the second to shed light on ancient migrations within the British Isles.
Background
Your genetics differs from that of your neighbour and this means you may differ in your risk of getting particular diseases. These genetic differences, known as genetic variation, contribute to inherited differences in susceptibility to many common diseases, such as cancer and heart disease. This can be investigated by comparing genetic differences between individuals with a specific disease to those without the disease.
However, in order to work out which genetic differences between people with and without a disease are potentially contributing to the disease, researchers need to know about the variation that is due to differing history and geography. This is the underlying pattern of genetic variation across the country. When this pattern is taken into account, any remaining differences may be important in understanding the genetics involved in the disease and can be looked into more closely.
To determine the genetic patterns across the British Isles, we will use genetic “markers” to look at every individual sample. One might expect, for example, to find fewer genetic differences between people in Cornwall and Devon than Cornwall and the Shetlands because, historically, there has been less movement between the more distant counties.
Once these genetic patterns have been identified, it should also be possible to use them to investigate historical patterns of movement within the UK. As well as this, comparison of these patterns with results from other populations that surround the UK, such as the Scandanavians, French and Germans, should help us to understand the impact they have had on the British over the Centuries.
Practicalities
What we plan to do is collect blood samples from between 100 and 150 people from about 30 different rural regions throughout the UK. To try and make sure that the sample is representative of the area throughout the ages, we are looking for people whose parents and grandparents were all born in the same locality.
If you can trace all your grandparents to the same local area, we would like to hear from you. Ultimately, we would require about half an hour of your time to fill in a brief questionnaire, a consent form and donate about 20ml of blood.
Contacts
Dr Bruce Winney
Tammy Day
Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Old Road Campus Research Building,University of Oxford, Old Road Campus,Off Roosevelt Drive,Headington,Oxford OX3 7DQ
