Whilst most online communities exist for purely commercial means, there are some with a slightly higher purpose.  Citizen science has become a big deal in the past few years, with sites like Galaxy Zoo allowing regular folks to participate in big science projects.

A similar project is under way to try and unlock the genetic history of Europe.  The community of citizen scientists will be analysing human genome data gathered and stored at the Sanger Centre in Cambridge.  Thus far they’ve managed to extract around 200 unique genetic variants from Y chromosones in the largest group of western European men.

By determining the patterns of these markers in each of the 1000 Genomes Project samples, they were able to draw up a new family tree for the majority of men in Western Europe.

The project is headed up by the University of Sheffield.

“Understanding European history since man first arrived on the continent is a huge challenge for archaeologists and historians,” says Andy Grierson, from the Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) at the University of Sheffield.

“One way that scientists can help is by studying the genetics of European men. All men carry a Y chromosome that they inherit from their father, which has been passed down the generations from father to son for thousands of years. So most men in Europe will share common ancestry at some point in the past, and we are able to investigate this shared ancestry using genetic studies of the Y chromosome.

“However, up until recently, there have not been many genetic clues on the Y chromosome to allow scientists to be certain about identifying different populations.”

The project aims to provide a more detailed analysis of population migration and expansion across Europe.  For instance, the analysis may help to understand the origins and migration patterns of various historical and cultural groups, such as the Celts.

“This community-led approach to genetic research could easily be adopted by other research areas. In particular, the 1000 Genomes Project has made the whole genome sequence of more than 2,000 individuals freely available for research purposes. These sequences potentially contain new information that will give important insight in diverse disciplines such as clinical medicine and evolutionary biology,” Griesrson says.

“One problem is that the amount of data analysis involved is huge, so working in partnership with citizen scientists allows us to move forward far more rapidly. There are thousands of science graduates, who for one reason or another have pursued non-scientific careers.

“Getting involved in citizen science projects is one way that these people can re-engage with research. Likewise many people with careers in IT and computing already have the sorts of skills required for analysing whole genome sequences in projects like ours.”

The project has attracted ‘scientists’ from around the world.  Greg Magoon, from Manchester, Connecticut, a community scientist involved in the project says, “It’s a very exciting time for this field. The development and use of new genome sequencing technologies over the last few years along with the public availability of data obtained with these technologies, particularly from initiatives like the 1000 Genomes Project, are enabling us to make rapid progress in our understanding of historical human migrations and paternal lineages.

“We’ve tried to show how such progress can be facilitated by an engaged community of individuals, with varied and complementary skills, connected via the Internet.”

The role of ‘networked science’ in modern life is indeed a fascinating one, and it’s a topic far too large to be covered in this post.  I can thoroughly recommend Reinventing Discovery though as a fantastic overview of the kind of work currently going on in this area.