Guido Barbujani (born January 31, 1955) is an Italian

population geneticist Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and popu ...

, evolutionary biologist and literary author born in

Adria Adria is a town and '' comune'' in the province of Rovigo in the Veneto region of northern Italy, situated between the mouths of the rivers Adige and Po. The remains of the Etruscan city of Atria or Hatria are to be found below the modern cit ...

, who has worked with the

State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system' ...

(NY),

University of Padua The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from ...

, and

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in contin ...

. He has taught at the

University of Ferrara The University of Ferrara ( it, Università degli Studi di Ferrara) is the main university of the city of Ferrara in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. In the years prior to the First World War the University of Ferrara, with more than 5 ...

since 1996.

Works

A population

geneticist A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic processes ...

by training, Barbujani has been working on several aspects of

human genetic variation Human genetic variation is the genetic differences in and among populations. There may be multiple variants of any given gene in the human population (alleles), a situation called polymorphism. No two humans are genetically identical. Even ...

. In collaboration with Robert R. Sokal, he pioneered the statistical comparison of patterns of genetic and linguistic variation, showing that language differences may contribute to reproductive isolation, and hence promote

genetic divergence Genetic divergence is the process in which two or more populations of an ancestral species accumulate independent genetic changes ( mutations) through time, often leading to reproductive isolation and continued mutation even after the populations ha ...

between populations. His analyses of geographic patterns of genetic variation in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

support

Luca Cavalli-Sforza Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (; 25 January 1922 – 31 August 2018) was an Italian geneticist. He was a population geneticist who taught at the University of Parma, the University of Pavia and then at Stanford University. Works Schooling and p ...

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

demic diffusion model, or the idea that farming spread in the Neolithic mainly because farmers did, and not by cultural transmission. There are two implications of this finding: first, that most Europeans' ancestors, up to Neolithic times, did not live in geographical

, but rather in the

Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

; and second, that the early farmers expanding west carried with them their genes, their technologies, and possibly their languages. His studies of the amount of DNA differentiation among

human populations Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...

, and of its spatial distribution, led to the conclusion that traditional human racial classifications fail to account for most of the existing patterns of genetic variation. Rather, it seems that genetic variation is largely uncorrelated across genes, which, if confirmed, would explain why no consensus was ever reached on a catalog of human biological races. This activity has also resulted in publications for the general public. His recent DNA studies focus on genetic characterization of ancient human populations, such as

Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

anatomically modern humans of

Cro-Magnoid Paleolithic Europe, or Old Stone Age Europe, encompasses the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age in Europe from the arrival of the first archaic humans, about 1.4 million years ago until the beginning of the Mesolithic (also Epipaleolithic) around 10,00 ...

morphology, and groups like the

Etruscans The Etruscan civilization () was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roug ...

and the

Sardinians The Sardinians, or Sards ( sc, Sardos or ; Italian and Sassarese: ''Sardi''; Gallurese: ''Saldi''), are a Romance language-speaking ethnic group native to Sardinia, from which the western Mediterranean island and autonomous region of Italy de ...

from the Nuragic era in the

.Ghirotto S., Mona S., Benazzo A., Paparazzo F., Caramelli D., Barbujani G. (2010) ''Inferring genealogical processes from patterns of Bronze–age and modern DNA variation in Sardinia.'' Molecular Biology and Evolution 27:775–786 Barbujani is the author of three novels.

Quote

*''"The idea that all humans naturally belong to one of a few biological types or races that evolved in isolation was unchallenged for centuries, but large-scale modern studies failed to associate racial labels with recognizable genetic clusters."'' (Barbujani G., 2005, p. 215)

References

Scientific Bibliography

* Barbujani G. and Sokal R.R. (1990) Zones of sharp genetic change in Europe are also linguistic boundaries. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA'' 87:1816-1819. * Barbujani G., Magagni A., Minch E. and Cavalli-Sforza L.L. (1997) An apportionment of human DNA diversity. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA'' 94:4516-4519. * Barbujani G. and Bertorelle G. (2001) Genetics and the population history of Europe. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA'' 98:22-25. * Chikhi L., Destro-Bisol G., Bertorelle G., Pascali V., and Barbujani G. (1998) Clines of nuclear DNA markers suggest a recent, Neolithic ancestry of the European gene pool. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA'', 95:9053-9058. * Romualdi C., Balding D., Nasidze I.S., Risch G., Robichaux M., Sherry S., Stoneking M., Batzer M. and Barbujani G. (2002) Patterns of human diversity, within and among continents, inferred from biallelic DNA polymorphisms. ''Genome Research'' 12:602-612. * Barbujani G. and Goldstein D.B. (2004) Africans and Asians abroad: Genetic diversity in Europe. ''Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics'' 5:119-150. * Dupanloup I., Bertorelle G., Chikhi L. and Barbujani G. (2004) Estimating the impact of prehistoric admixture on the Europeans’ genome. ''Molecular Biology and Evolution'' 21:1361-1372 * Barbujani G. (2005) Human races: Classifying people vs. understanding diversity. ''Current Genomics'' 6:215-226 * Belle E.M.S., Ramakrishnan U., Mountain J. and Barbujani G. (2006) Serial coalescent simulations suggest a weak genealogical relationship between Etruscans and modern Tuscans. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA'' 103:8012-8017. * Caramelli D., Milani L., Vai S., Modi A., Pecchioli E., Girardi M., Pilli E., Lari M., Lippi B., Ronchitelli A., Mallegni F., Casoli A., Bertorelle G., Barbujani G. (2008) A 28,000 years old Cro–Magnon mtDNA sequence differs from all potentially contaminating modern sequences. PLoS ONE 3:e2700. * Ghirotto S., Mona S., Benazzo A., Paparazzo F., Caramelli D., Barbujani G. (2010) Inferring genealogical processes from patterns of Bronze–age and modern DNA variation in Sardinia. Molecular Biology and Evolution 27:775–786. * Barbujani G. and Colonna V. (2010) Human genome diversity: Frequently asked questions. Trends in Genetics 26:285–295.

Bibliography (Books, Nonfiction)

* * * *

Bibliography (Books, Fiction)

* ''Dilettanti''. Marsilio, Venice, 1994 (Republished as: ''Dilettanti. Quattro viaggi nei dintorni di Charles Darwin''. Sironi, Milan, 2004) * ''Dopoguerra''. Sironi, Milan, 2002. * ''Questione di razza''. Mondadori, Milan, 2003.

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20080731132037/http://web.unife.it/progetti/genetica/Guido/ : Personal webpage, with access to pdfs of scientific articles. * https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060526065706.htm : ancient Etruscans unlikely ancestors of modern Tuscans. Science Daily, April 2006. * https://web.archive.org/web/20081217011325/http://www.festivaldellamente.it/pdf/ENG_2007_programme.pdf : taped interview on human diversity (in Italian), October 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Barbujani, Guido 1955 births Living people People from the Province of Rovigo Italian male writers Population geneticists Italian geneticists