Geneticists Attempt to Heal Rifts with Aboriginals the Two Groups Are Working Together to Trace the Ancestry of Indigenous Communities

NEWS IN FOCUS GEOMAGNETISM Space BIOLOGY CRISPR patent clash ARCHAEOLOGY Intact human WORKFORCE Gap widens weather forecasts get turns ugly as commercial bones found in Antikythera between best- and worst- regional specificity p.458 stakes rise p.460 shipwreck p.462 paid in research p.465 DAVID MAURICE SMITH/OCULI/AGENCE VU/CAMERAPRESS SMITH/OCULI/AGENCE MAURICE DAVID

Aboriginal Australian communities have had a troubled history with genetics researchers.

GENETICS Geneticists attempt to heal rifts with Aboriginals The two groups are working together to trace the ancestry of indigenous communities.

BY EWEN CALLAWAY before the country’s government granted full knowledge of human prehistory, while also citizenship to Aboriginals in 1967. involving communities in genomics research. n 1938, anthropologists Norman Tindale Western museums are filled with Aboriginal Three papers published this week in Nature1–3 and Joseph Birdsell set off on an 18-month, Australian artefacts, as well as hair, skulls and use genome data from Aboriginal Australians. 29,000-kilometre expedition to survey other tissues collected on similar expeditions. One reports sequences from 83 individuals IAustralia’s indigenous groups. They took And decades of such treatment by researchers and is the largest survey of Aboriginal genetic photographs, physical measurements and engendered strong mistrust among Aboriginal diversity yet published. With the other two hair samples from thousands of Aborigi- communities. However, a new generation of papers, it helps to chart human migrations nal Australians at a time when few protec- geneticists is attempting to repair relations. out of Africa and into Australasia, addressing tions existed for research subjects, and well These scientists are eager to fill gaps in their a major question about how Homo sapiens

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moved around the world. “Increasingly, there is an awareness that there researchers to access the data. Participants can Fraught relations between Aboriginal are rules and terms of engagement in terms of see how their data are used through an Internet communities and geneticists continued well doing research with Aboriginal people and portal and can withdraw their DNA from any into the twentieth century with the Human communities,” says Alex Brown, a public health project if they wish. Genetic Diversity Project, a 1990s survey of researcher at the University of South Australia “There’s been damage done in the past, and indigenous groups worldwide. Worries that in Adelaide and an Aboriginal Australian. He it’s really important that people have a sense scientists would create patented cell lines and Willerslev are now studying type 2 diabetes of ownership,” says NCIG director Simon using blood gathered from Aboriginal groups in Aboriginal people, who have much higher Easteal at the Australian National University in prevented any sample collection. rates of the disease than other Australians. Canberra. He also hopes the database can help Two decades later, publication of the first Other geneticists are also trying to build individuals pinpoint their heritage, especially Aboriginal Australian genome4 was nearly bridges with indigenous groups. The Aborigi- members of the ‘stolen generations’ who were shelved because researchers did not get nal Heritage Project, which aims to sequence forcibly removed from their families as children approval from any Aboriginal group before DNA from the 5,000 and raised among white Australians. sequencing some hair collected in the 1920s. “It’s really hair samples that There are still rocky moments. Willerslev After a team member threatened to withdraw important Tindale, Birdsell and says some people turn his team away, but from the project, lead author Eske Willerslev, that people others collected, is he hopes that relations overall are improv- an evolutionary geneticist at the Natural His- have a sense of seeking approval ing. Meanwhile, some scientists in Australia, tory Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, ownership.” from living descend- including Cooper and Easteal, worry about went to Western Australia to seek the blessing ants before doing any overseas researchers, whom they think may not of an Aboriginal group in the region where the sequencing. And their engagement does not be attuned to Australian cultural complexities. hair had been collected. end there. “We’re asking them what they want But Brown has no qualms about interna- “I do regret that I didn’t approach them to find out, rather than the other way around, tional researchers if they obey ethical guide- before we had started undertaking the study,” which is how most research is done on Aborigi- lines and act with the interests of Aboriginal says Willerslev. But he is glad that he obtained nal groups,” says project leader Alan Cooper at communities in mind. “It is much easier to their backing before publication in 2011. the University of Adelaide. Of the 150 families work with people who have proven and mean- approached so far, only one has declined to ingful relationships with indigenous commu- RULES OF ENGAGEMENT participate. nities,” he says. “My push on them will be: sure, In the study published this week1, Willerslev The National Centre for Indigenous Genom- you’ll get your pound of flesh out of this, but if and his team sequenced Aboriginal ics (NCIG), which maintains a database of you’re not leaving something behind, then we Australian genomes to trace the arrival of 7,000 blood samples gathered from nearly 50 simply can’t do it.” ■ humans in Australia some 50,000 years ago communities since the 1960s, is also giving 1. Malaspinas, A.-S. et al. Nature http://dx.doi. and track their spread across the continent. Aboriginal groups a say in research. Blood org/10.1038/nature18299 (2016). Willerslev says his meeting with Goldfields samples will not be included in its database 2. Mallick, S. et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ Land and Sea Council — the group consulted without permission from individuals or their nature18964 (2016). 3. Pagani, L. et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ for the 2011 genome study — paved the way surviving relatives, and a committee of indig- nature19792 (2016). for outreach to other communities. enous Australians will weigh all requests from 4. Rasmussen, M. et al. Science 334, 94–98 (2011).

SPACE WEATHER US sharpens surveillance of crippling solar storms Next-generation space-weather model will map the danger facing power grids.

BY ALEXANDRA WITZE use a more sophisticated model to predict communications and satellite operations, but how incoming solar storms could fry electri- some of their most devastating effects are on n the fight to protect Earth from solar cal power grids. It will be the clearest guide yet electrical power grids. In 1989, a solar storm storms, the battle lines are drawn in space as to which utility operators, in what parts of wiped out Canada’s entire Hydro-Québec grid at a point 1.6 million kilometres away. the world, need to worry. for hours, leaving several million people in IThere, a US National Oceanic and Atmos- “This is the first time we will get short-term the dark. In 2003, storm-induced surges fried pheric Administration (NOAA) satellite waits forecasts of what the changes at the surface transformers in South Africa and overheated for electrons and protons to wash over it, a sign of the Earth will be,” says Bob Rutledge, lead others at a nuclear power plant in Sweden. But that the Sun has burped a flood of charged forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Predic- if a power company knows that a solar storm is particles in our direction. tion Center in Boulder, Colorado. “We can tell coming, officials can shunt power from threat- As early as the end of this month, NOAA a power-grid customer not only that it will be a ened areas of the network to safer ones or take should have a much better idea of just how bad day, but give them some heads-up on what other precautions. dangerous those electromagnetic storms are. exactly they will be facing.” Until now, NOAA had warned of solar The agency will begin releasing forecasts that Powerful solar storms can knock out radio activity using the planetary K-index, a scale

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