Geneticists Reconstruct Population History Of New York City

By Combining Genetic Data, Ancestry Information, And Electronic Health Records, Scientists Are Able To Identify Neighborhood-Level Patterns Of Migration In The New York City Area, According To Research Presented At The American Society Of Human Genetics (Ashg) 2015 Annual Meeting In Baltimore.

In addition to supplementing historical and census data, these sorts of findings can inform biomedical and public health efforts in New York and other locations, the study authors said.

“New York City is an important point of entry and immigration, and has long been one of the major ‘melting pots’ of the world. The population structure there is complex and interesting from a variety of perspectives, including the genetic one,” said Gillian Belbin, MS, a graduate student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) and first author on the study.

“These days, other cities such as London and Shanghai are reaching the same levels of diversity as New York, and many of our methods and findings can be applied to those cities’ populations as well,” added Eimear Kenny, PhD, Assistant Professor at ISMMS and senior author on the study.