Washington – The rich human biodiversity in Italy owes much to those small communities, now increasingly threatened, which survived for centuries with limited exchange of ideas and genes. Each of them has developed a different way of being isolated such as marital choices, that throughout history, have fluctuated the reproductive barriers and local cultural identities. A research project funded by the National Geographic Society lead by Sergio Tofanelli, anthropologist of the Department of Biology of the University of Pisa, explores the genetic diversity of these communities in order to rebuild the unwritten history of Italian populations. (9Colonne)
