Tricorder Technology in the Modern World

MSNBC is running the following article by Alan Boyle in Cosmic Log, “Hairs Trace Human History”  [link]

(Image from MSNBC article)

“For the first time, scientists have deciphered the genetic code of an ancient human from a long-gone culture, using the DNA from just a few tufts of 4,000-year-old hair preserved in Greenland's permafrost.

“Thanks to the rapid advance of gene-sequencing technology, researchers could tell the hair belonged to a brown-skinned man whose ancestors came to the New World from Siberia around 5,500 years ago, during a previously unknown migration. And that's not all.”

Here’s what else they learned about this guy (quoted from the article):

• His blood type was A+, which is found in very high frequency in east Asian populations.
• Combinations of SNPs suggest that he had brown eyes as well as dark, thick hair and a skin color that was not as light as that commonly found in Europeans.
• One of the SNPs is linked to shovel-graded front teeth, a characteristic trait of Asian and Native American populations.
• Another SNP is linked to having earwax of the dry type that is typical of Asians and Native Americans, rather than the "wet" earwax found in other ethnic groups.
• A 12-SNP combination, linked to metabolism and body mass index, suggests that Inuk was adapted to a cold climate.
• Inuk's genetic code also indicates that he had an increased risk of baldness. The fact that Inuk's hair could be recovered thousands of years later led Willerslev to suggest half-jokingly that "he actually died quite young."

We’re on the verge of adding information like this to the human body of knowledge:

“…the geneticists also said sequencing techniques were improving so much, for ancient as well as present-day DNA, that other long-dead cultures could be studied in the future. What skin color did the ancient Egyptians have? What genetic diseases afflicted the Etruscans? How did humans settle the Americas?”

I may be getting a bit too controversial here, but wouldn’t it be interesting to run a maternity/paternity scan on all the European Royals? How many “rightful” heirs were actually interlopers? The answer to that question could create massive turmoil in the history of monarchies?

Separately, remember the concept of the Tricorder in Star Trek? The difference between that technology and this technology is that the Tricorder was a Field instrument. As of today, we have to test the samples in the lab. We’re getting closer by the year.