Physical anthropologists study the distribution and determinants of diseases in various ethnic populations and its findings are used for intervention and to promote health in the studied population. The effect of lifestyle transition and role of epigenetics on health and disease of different ethnic populations are also explored thereby it aids in public health and epidemiology.
Genetic epidemiology:
Epidemiological studies is one of the another important application of genetics in the field of health sciences. According to John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Genetic Epidemiology is the study of how genetic factors contribute to health and disease in families and populations, and how genes interplay with environmental factors . So, it can be inferred that it is the study of interaction of genes and environments on health and disease risk in populations, which is very resemblance with Anthropological approach of ‘Nature-Nurture’ interaction. Genetic epidemiologists attempt to identify the many components of risk attributable to genes, environments, and interactions between these two factors in the progression and manifestation of various disorders, especially of the complex one. In the post human genome era, technological advancement such as implementation of genome-wide association studies, sequencing etc., have brought a new dimension in the biomedical research with identification of various disease susceptibility loci and interaction among each other in the phenotypic expression of the traits under concerned. Moreover, the epigenetic approach also contributes understanding to the role of gene and its associated factors in the varied disease expression. Genetically no two individuals are identified, similarly one Mendelian population differ from each other in terms of
its genetic structure. Individuals in a population are believed to share a common gene pool, and hence disease susceptibility loci are more or less common among the individuals of the same population.
Here, the importance of population genetic variation lies in analyzing the disease susceptibility loci in different population and so forth different disease management programme can be taken up. The interaction of human genetic variation in epidemiological approach is well evident through demographic parameters as the changing demographic aspects (i.e. mating patterns or admixing) may transform the population’s gene pool, which in turn could switch on/off the clinically important risk alleles (genes) and thereby affecting the community health with complex disorders. Metagenomics studies are also a part of genetic epidemiological approach. The role of microbes and its genome in understanding the overall human health can’t be ruled out. Metagenomics, the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples, has emerged as a powerful tool that can be used to analyze microbial communities regardless of the ability of member organisms to be cultured in the laboratory. Metagenomics could also unlock the massive uncultured microbial diversity present in the environment to provide new molecules for therapeutic and biotechnological applications . The application of met genomics can be more clearly understand in the context of human nutritional studies. Nutrients are important basic needs for human body functioning, but the problem lies that at the present the world is witnessing dual faces of nutrition – under nutrition and over nutrition, which both are harmful to the human health. Absorption and digestion of nutrients have biological implications. The microbes present in the intestinal tract have a major role in the overall process. The interaction of microbes and its genomic contents need to assess to address the human nutritional problem (Ahmed et al., 2009)