Report of the Anthropology / Human Genetic Diversity Component
May 7, 2002

Dear Colleagues,

We have all completed quite a bit of work in 2002. The Victoria Workshop Meeting is less than a week away and we are in the process of finalizing our plans for the Anthropology Sessions. This update details our current plans for the meeting, and summarizes the work we plan to present for discussion at the meeting.

The 13th International Histocompatibility Workshop will be held at the Victoria Conference Center at 720 Douglas Street (right behind the Empress Hotel) in Victoria British Columbia from May 12th until May 16th. For more information on traveling to Victoria, please see the IHWC web site (www.ihwc.org).

Workshop Sessions
The two Anthropology Workshop sessions will take place on Monday May 13 from 12:45pm -3:45pm and on Tuesday May 14 from 12:30pm -3:30pm. Both session 1 and session 2 will be held in the Colwood room. In addition, this room will be at our disposal through Thursday, and meetings with the Anthro Team and the Biostatistics Core can be held in this room. The preliminary schedule for these sessions is as outlined below.

Session I	Monday, May 13	Presenter
Introduction		Henry Erlich
Presentations by Project Participants
	HLA class I and II in Filipinos and other Pacirfic/Asian populations: Implication for Type I Diabetes	Teodorica L. Bugawan
	HLA class I and II allele and haplotype distribution in Bulgarians - contribution to understanding the origin of the population	Milena Ivanova
	HLA class I allelic micropolymorphism vs class II haplotyupes to distinguish culturally different Amerindian tribes	Zulay Layrisse
	A Database for Allele Frequencies	Derek Middleton
	HLA diversity and linguistic variation worldwide	Alicia Sanchez-Mazas
Project Data Overview		Steven Mack
Data Analysis discussions	Hardy-Weinberg Analyses, Haplotype Estimation and Linkage Disequilibrium Analyses	Diogo Meyer, Rich Single and participants

Session 2	Tuesday, May 14	Presenter
Review of session #1		Henry Erlich
Data Analysis Discussions	Homozygosity Analyses and Analyses of Global Patterns of Diversity	Steven Mack and participants
Synthesis and Future Plans		Henry Erlich

Anthropology Symposium
The Anthropology Symposium will take place on Tuesday May 14 from 8:00am -10:00am. Please be sure to go to bed early Monday evening. Where the two Workshop sessions will be primarily attended by Anthro Component participants, most of the Workshop attendants will come to the Symposium. The focus of the Symposium will be an overview of the specific points discussed in the Workshop sessions. The preliminary schedule for the Symposium is as outlined below.

Anthropology Symposium	Tuesday, May 14	Presenter
Introduction		Henry Erlich
	Evolutionary Anthropology	Mark Stoneking
Data Analysis I		Steven Mack
Data Analysis II		Diogo Meyer
the Future		Henry Erlich

Project Status
The Anthropology / Human Genetic Diversity component has completed much work over the course of the last two years. We appreciate your hard work and support and commend each of you on your contributions to this project. This should truly be an exciting and interesting workshop.

As of January 2002, we have received new HLA typing data from 37 laboratories, representing 10,036 individuals in 90 populations. Of these, we have completed analysis for 59 (7033 individuals) populations. In addition, we have incorporated 60 population datasets generated as a part of the 12th Workshop into these 13th workshop analyses, for a total of 119 population datasets representing 15,146 individuals typed. Analyzed datasets have been distributed to participating laboratories for review. Documentation describing these preliminary analyses can be found on the IHWG web site (http://www.ihwg.org/components/data-analysis-output.html).

We were unable to carry out analyses on 31 population datasets submitted as a part of the IHWG. The reasons for these omissions range from formatting issues (e.g., non-standard data formats, or missing sample ids) to typing issues (e.g., Serological-level typing, or non-existent alleles such as DPB1*0701) and logistical issues (e.g. too many data-files for the database to import efficiently). If you have not received an analytical output file, then your data falls into one of these categories.

We fully intend to analyze all datasets as part of this project, and intend to discuss our plans for future analyses at the workshop. We hope that those of you with un-analyzed data will be willing to meet with the Anthro Team and the Biostatistics Core so that we can resolve some of these issues. If you are able, please bring electronic copies of your data (floppy or zip disk, CD or DVD-ROM) with you to the workshop and we will schedule a time to meet with you.

Letters of Certification for Human Subjects Use Authorization

Several participating laboratories have yet to submit letters certifying their authorization to carry out research with human subjects. The NIH U24 grant supporting the IHWG requires that we have these letters on file in order for us to make use of the data generated as a part of this project. If your group has not submitted such a certification, we may not be able to include your data in either the Workshop Analyses or the published record of the Workshop. A copy of this Human Subjects letter can be obtained from the Anthro section of the IHWG web site (http://www.ihwg.org/components/diversr.htm). Please fax the completed certification to Steve Mack or Andrea Jani at 510 883-7910 as soon as possible.

See you next week!


Henry Erlich, Steve Mack, and Andrea Jani
Anthropology / Human Genetic Diversity Component  

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