Bringing Dna-Guided Medicine to the Hispanic Population (Commentary‪)‬

DNA-guided medicine poses great advantages for the highly heterogeneous Hispanic population. Similar to others in Latin America, the Puerto Rican population originated as a result of admixture between Amerindians, whose ancestors had migrated from the Amazon Basin and arrived in Puerto Rico 2200 years before present, and Spaniard and West-African individuals. The island of Puerto Rico thus is endowed with a distinctive population in terms of its gene flow. There are growing numbers of Puerto Ricans in the USA. Currently, Puerto Ricans represent 1.2% of the USA population and 9.6% of the Hispanic population in the USA. Admixture studies in Puerto Ricans, either in the island or the continental USA, have been scarce. The history of migration and admixture can be reconstructed and interpreted using genetic markers. Our results demonstrated that population analysis can be performed with functionally important genes instead of conventional ancestry informational markers to increase the relevance of population genetic studies for clinical epidemiology and personalized medicine. In this commentary, we examine the various implications of these findings and suggest an interpretation of the data utilizing a collage technique. Physiogenomic Profile of the Puerto Rican Population