Deborah Bolnick, Ph.D.

Professor University of Connecticut

  • Storrs CT

Dr. Bolnick is an expert on genetic ancestry testing and how sociopolitical forces & history shape human genomic diversity.

Contact

University of Connecticut

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Biography

Deborah Bolnick is an anthropological geneticist and biological anthropologist who explores how sociopolitical forces, historical events, and social inequalities shape human genomic and epigenomic diversity, as well as human biology more broadly. In her research, Bolnick analyzes DNA from ancient and contemporary peoples, in conjunction with other lines of evidence, to reconstruct population histories and the impact of settler colonialism in the Americas. Bolnick also investigates the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomic research and genetic ancestry testing.

She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Davis, and is a past president of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics. She is also the co-author (with John Relethford) of Reflections of Our Past: How Human History is Revealed in Our Genes, and is a co-organizer of the Summer internship for Indigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) program.

Areas of Expertise

Native American Genetic Histories
Human Biodiversity
Genetic Ancestry Testing
Anthropology
Ancient DNA
Race
Human Genomics

Education

University of California - Davis

Ph.D.

2005

Social

Media Appearances

Criminologists, Looking to Biology for Insight, Stir a Racist Past

Undark  online

2023-01-25

At the same time, experts in human evolution say, biology is a terrible tool for explaining these kinds of racial disparities. For one thing, racial categories are just rough attempts to describe the biological variation among human beings, rather than fixed, coherent categories of people who have evolved along different trajectories. For another, even if scientists can sometimes identify average genetic differences among socially defined groups, those differences tend to be very slight — and have no obvious link to a complex social phenomenon like violent behavior.

It’s “just kind of fascinating that we would presume that there is something that’s so simplistic about complex behaviors, that it could map on to something like skin color in a fairly straightforward way,” said Deborah Bolnick, an expert in human evolution and genetics at the University of Connecticut.

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What’s in a Genome? The Quest to Decipher Human Difference

Undark  online

2022-12-13

Indeed, it’s possible to search for differences among any socially constructed cluster of people, and perhaps find something, if only by chance. Deborah Bolnick, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Connecticut, brought up an imaginary set of people — some of whom have purple-dyed hair, and some who do not. “If we searched hard enough, we might be able to find one point in the DNA that everybody who has purple hair has, and everybody who just hasn’t dyed their hair purple doesn’t have,” she said. “So that would be a genetic difference between these two groups. Is that meaningful?”

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The DNA of Roma People Has Long Been Misused, Scientists Reveal

New York Times  print

2021-11-17

“This is an important contribution to the ongoing conversation about ethical issues in genetic research,” said Deborah Bolnick, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Connecticut who was not involved with research. Much of this conversation has taken place in North America and Australia, not Europe, she added.

“The unethical practices described here are unfortunately very familiar and not a surprise,” Dr. Bolnick added.

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Articles

Palaeo-Eskimo genetic ancestry and the peopling of Chukotka and North America

Nature

2019

Much of the American Arctic was first settled 5,000 years ago, by groups of people known as Palaeo-Eskimos. They were subsequently joined and largely displaced around 1,000 years ago by ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yup’ik1,2,3. The genetic relationship between Palaeo-Eskimos and Native American, Inuit, Yup’ik and Aleut populations remains uncertain.

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Comparing signals of natural selection between three Indigenous North American populations

PNAS

2019

Recent studies have shown that humans have adapted to many different environments around the world. However, few studies have centered on Indigenous groups in the Americas. We present a comparative analysis of genetic adaptations in humans across North America using genome-wide scans for signals of natural selection in three populations inhabiting vastly different environments.

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How Academic Diversity Is Transforming Scientific Knowledge in Biological Anthropology

AnthroSource

2019

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