Bottlenecked: Greenland's Inuit Population

      Genetic variation within a species' population is important to its overall health and survival. The article I came across was recently published in the Journal Genetics and discusses the effect of bottle-necking on a populations genetic variation. More specifically it looks into the Inuit population of Greenland and the effect bottle-necking has on deleterious, or harmful, genetic variations. For more insight into deleterious genetic variation you can take a look at this article by Kirk Lohmueller, who goes into detail about this phenomenon and its distribution in human populations.

       As for the original article the researchers found that the Inuit population did see a slight increase in deleterious alleles. They also determined the Inuit population had a much higher genetic load compared to other human populations who have experienced less bottle-necking. Genetic load refers to the difference between the fitness of optimal and observed genotypes in a population. This information gives insight into how the genetics of populations are negatively impacted by bottle-necking. These articles are in regards to human populations but this could be extrapolated onto other species. It seems to me that this is something that may help us in future wildlife conservation efforts.