Education
Yale University; University of California, Berkeley.
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Sarah Tishkoff
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One of her focuses is the genetic history of African populations, including the causes for lactose persistence among some African population groups. Tishkoff was a fellow at Pennsylvania State University from 1997–2000 and worked as an assistant professor and later associate professor at the University of Maryland from 2000–2007. Tishkoff was lead writer of the 2007 paper "Convergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe" which was published in Nature Genetics.
The paper documented three new single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for lactase persistence among ethnic groups in East-Africa.
These mutations were different from the mutation for lactose tolerance that is common in Europe (C/T-13910). The most widespread mutation was found among Nilo-Saharan speaking groups in Tanzania and Kenya while two independent mutations were found among the Beja people in Sudan and Afroasiatic speaking people in Kenya.
The SNPs did not however fully explain the ability among some African persons to digest milk. A 2014 study published in American Journal of Human Genetics documented two more SNPs that could be linked to lactose tolerance, although causation was not firmly established.
The study also found the European variant C/T-13910 among some pastoralist groups in Northern and Central Africa.
