The Sports Gene: Chapter 9

Chapter 9 of The Sports Gene is titles "We are All Black (Sort of.)" This chapter is about different genetic and DNA testing of different people and populations all around the globe with a scientist named Kenneth Kidd. He aimed to categorize genetic variation around the world by looking at corresponding stretches of DNA in different populations and seeing how they are different. Using the information he obtained, he, along with geneticist Sarah Tiskoff, drew a family tree for everyone on Earth. After all their work, they supported the "recent African origin" model that basically says every human outside of Africa can trace their ancestry to one population that lived in sub-Saharan East Africa as recently as 90,000 years ago. This was super interesting to me and I was very intrigued from this point which is weird because I have never actually been a person to be super interested in where we all came from and the science behind that.  There are so many theories and no one really knows which is truly correct and I have never done anymore research than the baseline level of what people have told me, and so, I've never really cared. It is super interesting however, that people have the least genetic diversity in the Americas and the most in Africa, even though I personally feel like there would be more diversity here than in Africa population wise, but I am wrong. What does all this have to do with a sports gene? Kidd suggests that for any skill that has a genetic component, theoretically, both the most and least athletically gifted individuals in the world might be African or of recent African decent. So basically, the fastest and the slowest athlete could be from Africa. Basically, don't pick athletes based on where they are from. However, certain (key word certain) athletes do have a genetic advantage in sports performance. 

A lot of this chapter goes into different genes and genetic mutations and DNA science that never really piqued my interest as the pages went by. It did talk about Lactose and how most Rwandans are lactose intolerant, something I never knew. 

As the pages started heading to sports, my interest grew again and the one thing that I came to learn and realize was that after all these tests and research that was done, all ACTN3 can tell us is who won't be competing in olympics and its not even good at that. It can also tell us that there are almost no black people anywhere in the world who are ruled out. The one question I have for this chapter is why would it spend a whole chapter on a one thing that may or may not do its job well? 

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