My father and I made genetics history. We were the first African-Americans and the first father and son anywhere to have their genomes sequenced.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My family and I were some of the first people to be genotyped.
During this period, I became interested in how the new techniques of cloning and sequencing DNA could influence the study of genetics and I was an early and active proponent of the Human Genome Sequencing Project.
The physical DNA has always been part of our family. My dad was a good boxer and gymnast; my mum is a ballroom dancer, and my brother does martial arts.
For each gene in your genome, you quite often get a different version of that gene from your father and a different version from your mother. We need to study these relationships across a very large number of people.
I don't know much about my family history except that my father had straight black hair and his ancestors probably came from India.
I was raised by strong women, and that DNA is in my daughter and wife.
My mother birthed three children and she adopted myself and another African-American son. My adoptive parents were Finnish. I grew up in a white picket neighborhood.
I am truly multi-racial. I never knew my biological father. I've always had less information than I would have liked to have had. All I know from my mother is that I have connections to many different cultures.
Our own genomes carry the story of evolution, written in DNA, the language of molecular genetics, and the narrative is unmistakable.
Living in your genome is the history of our species.