World-renowned population geneticist Spencer Wells, who is scheduled to arrive in Taiwan Nov. 25 to unveil an exhibition titled The Journey of Man, will at the same time collect DNA samples from several people in Taiwan to advance his research project.
Wells, head of the Population Genetics Center, Cambridge, UK, who is also the host of the National Geographic production entitled The Journey of Man.
He has traveled around the six continents collecting DNA samples from a total of 163 different populations in a bid to prove, by comparing the DNA variations of the different populations, that human beings originated in Africa.
Wells and his Taiwan team from the National Geographic channel are planning to collect the DNA samples from seven men, including Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (
To prove his "out of Africa" theory, Wells and his research colleagues from Cambridge and Stanford University have compared hundreds of DNA samples from men around the world, focusing on about a dozen sites along the Y chromosome.
Because the Y chromosome is passed on largely unchanged from father to son, any site-to-site match in the DNA sequences of two samples suggests that those two men share a recent male-line ancestor.
Wells and his group will also obtain DNA samples from writer Hou Wen-yung (
The DNA samples will be taken back to the medical center of Stanford University as part of Wells' DNA variation studies.
Wells is scheduled to preside over the opening Nov. 26 of The Journey of Man exhibition to be held at the National Science and Technology Museum in Kaohsiung. The exhibition is scheduled to run until Dec. 22.
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