Alan Templeton | |
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| Born | Alan Robert Templeton |
| Education | Washington University in St. Louis University of Michigan |
| Known for | Quantifying human genetic diversity |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Human genetics |
| Institutions | Washington University in St. Louis,University of Haifa |
| Thesis | Statistical Models of Parthenogenesis (1972) |
Alan R. Templeton is an Americangeneticist andstatistician atWashington University in St. Louis, where he is theCharles Rebstock emeritus professor of biology.[1] From 2010 to 2019, he held positions in the Institute of Evolution and the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology at theUniversity of Haifa.[2] He is known for his work demonstrating the degree of genetic diversity amonghumans and, in his opinion, the biological unreality of humanraces.[3]
In 2002, Templeton published a genetic analysis showing that some gene variants that are present in modern populations existed already in Asia hundreds of thousands of years ago.[4] This meant that even if our male line (Y chromosome) and our female line (mitochondrial DNA) came out of Africa in the last 100,000 years or so, we have inherited other genes from populations that were already outside of Africa. Since this study other studies have been done using much more data (seePhylogeography).
According to Templeton's research, perceived differences in races are more related tocultural perceptions and biases than any underlying genetic reality.[5] For example, Templeton's statistical analysis of thehuman genome shows that much greatergenetic diversity exists between populations ofchimpanzees than humans from different parts of the world.[3]
Using data from the International HapMap Project and the 1000 Genomes project, Templeton and a team of researchers looked at mutations encompassing thegephyrin gene ofchromosome 14 and were able to trace the split back to thelast common ancestor.[6][7]
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