Decoding Vietnamese genes: Who are we?

How are the ancestors of the Thai, Tay, Nung . related to the ancestors of the Kinh or other ethnic groups? Where the Vietnamese people come from is not easy to answer.

Prof. Dr. Nong Van Hai , former founder of the Genome Research Institute, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology has made a great contribution to answer this question.

Decode the genome to find the source

For many years, ethnologists and archeologists have made some assumptions that the Vietnamese ethnic community today, though different, has had a close relationship during the period of nation-building and throughout the afternoon. long history. But apart from ethnological and archeological theories, is there any other explanation? In the world, there have been many human gene studies to prove the relationship and migration flow among ethnic groups in ancient times, thereby gradually revealing the picture of relations between ethnic groups. 

In Vietnam, such studies are still very new and primitive, due to the decoding of ancient remains unearthed from the Dong Son period and not so much before, the decoding of modern human genomes is almost complete. just focus on Kinh people so they can't see all the diversity.

Carrying out genetic research for the analysis of Vietnamese evolutionary anthropology, the Institute of Genome Research, under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, has implemented the project 'Sequencing and building the first complete Vietnamese genome' . (Photo: IT).

In this context, research on the genetic diversity of the Vietnamese genome, sampling surveys of 22 different ethnic groups of Prof. Dr. Nong Van Hai and his colleagues contributed to the first valuable database. In order to explain the relationship between nations today and at the beginning of Vietnamese history. These have been presented by Prof. Dr. Nong Van Hai, answered by the seminar "Genetic diversity and origin of Vietnamese people".

Carrying out genetic research to analyze Vietnamese evolutionary anthropology, the Institute of Genome Research, under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, has implemented the project "Sequencing and completely building the first Vietnamese genome". made "reference sequences" and "initially analyzed the evolutionary anthropology of Vietnamese people" , and decoded 600 complete mitochondrial genomes from individuals of 17 ethnic groups in Vietnam. However, at the seminar, Prof. Dr. Nong Van Hai, former Director of the Genome Research Institute said, "this is an extremely complex problem ", and the gene industry or other sectors "is just like a fortune teller. elephants".

Not only Vietnamese people need to find the origin, right near our country, Thailand, China are also looking for their own origins . Many countries have built very large gene data sets, even "clubs of water sequenced 100,000 to 1 million genomes " . As for the small number of samples available in Vietnam, it is difficult to confirm anything about the origin right now. "All fields, history, languages, geography, science in general . and new efforts gradually make the answer to the question of who we are and where we come from" , Prof. Dr. Nong Van Hai said.

Humans have the same origin

Analysis of existing human genomes may help confirm the genetic diversity of modern ethnic groups. For example, may indicate common characteristics between the Kinh, Tay, Thai . compared to other specific ethnic groups within the same ethnic group (classified by linguistic system) or ethnic linguistic groups other.

Research by Prof. Dr. Nong Van Hai and his colleagues has shown that among ethnic groups with genetic history, some common origin and genetic overlap, there is no "purebred" nation. . That is, the ethnic groups today have the same origin, only that the people "split" sooner or later rather than the ethnicity that is far or near compared to other ethnic groups.

To implement the project, Prof. Nong Van Hai cooperated with American professor Mark Stoneking, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany, who has extensive experience in cooperating to analyze the genome of many ethnic groups. from Thailand, the Philippines to the peoples of Africa. The research team sampled the largest-ever ethnic group in Vietnam - more than 600 people from 22 ethnic groups in the five main linguistics families in Vietnam and mainland Southeast Asia (including linguistics families) : South Asia, Thai - Kadai, Hmong-Mien, Nam Dao and Han - Tibet), and analyzed together with the genome data of the neighboring modern population group and the genetic data sets of people in Southeast Asia. Ancient has been previously published in the international genome database.

But in the genome sequence with over 3 billion "characters" of each person, how to identify the similarities and differences among ethnic groups in the most reasonable way? The analysis group of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), which focused on genomic analysis using the new CHIP gene technology (including about 600,000 points to show the genetic difference between the individual). These are also the technologies that major ethnic genetic groups in the world are using mainly, because 99.9% of the genome sequence is completely the same among individuals and ethnic groups. all of humanity, Professor Nong Van Hai said.

The analysis results, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution5 (Q1, IF ~ 15, 2nd in evolutionary biology) show that "linguistic ethnic diversity has reflected other sources." There are differences in genetic diversity in Vietnam ", meaning that among 22 ethnic groups surveyed, " this ethnic group shares the same genetic characteristics of other ethnic groups in the same linguistic or linguistic families " , Prof. Nong Van Customs explained. For example, looking at the Admixture data tables can be clearly seen: different color bands conventional for different ethnic or linguistic groups show the "hybrid" status among Ethnicity is common and obvious.