For centuries the Jarawa tribe were notorious for using bows and arrows to kill any intruder into their jungle home, deep in the interior of a tropical island.
Now, however, their days as feared warriors are over and the Jarawa - until recently one of Asia
though not in the near future, the Jarawa tribe in the Andaman and Nicobar islands may be in for some respite. Officials are planning to stop use of the first stretch of the Andaman Trunk Road (atr) that connects south Andaman with the north and middle Andaman islands while passing through the Jarawa Tribal Reserve. The Union territory
R K Bhattacharya Former director, Anthropological Survey of India, and member of the Expert Committee appointed by the Calcutta High Court. In the report submitted to the court in 2003, he says:
The Indian government should step in to protect the Jarawa tribe of the Andaman islands, who are now in danger of being wiped out by settlers invading their territory, said activists of Survival
The communication by Singh et al. on single nucleotide polymorphisms among the Jarawas of the Andaman Islands appears to be a purely academic endeavour. The evident outcome of the study is the discovery of polymorphism in two genes. The authors have not elaborated on the significance of the discovery for the Jarawa populations investigated. It is also difficult to comprehend how any population genetics-based epidemiological study could be undertaken without information on the parent-offspring relationships in the samples.
Discovery and validation of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the human genome is an active area of interest, because of their usefulness in evolutionary and disease-association studies. The researchers have resequenced 70 chromosomes from the Jarawa, a Negrito tribal group inhabiting the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago for a = 10 kb genomic region spanning two genes.
