The Bioinformatic Basis of Pan-Asianism

Abstract

The socially calculated Asian body is an abstract discursive space bridging early twentieth- and twenty-first-century Pan-Asianism across multiple scientific understandings of race and ethnicity. In the early twentieth century, the pan-Asian body was a static, statistical taxonomy of precisely measured blood and body parts. As an administrative tool of empire and nation building, the quantitatively defined Asian was plotted along Cartesian coordinates of racial purity. By the twenty-first century, new computational technologies flexibly supported both national and transcendent pan-Asian ethnic identities by constructing regional populations as dynamic probabilistic clusters over time. This paper focuses on how the Pan-Asian SNP Consortium (PASNP) of the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO), the first inter-Asian genomics collaboration, embodied a revival of Pan-Asianism in both the members' collaborative network and scientific research. As a network of scientists, the PASNP members heralded the spirit of regional cooperation to bring about the rise of a pan-Asian research area in science. Through their research, the members reflexively calculated a new narrative of the shared ethnic origin and genetic unity of the region. Biochip data, probabilistic clustering algorithms, and computer simulations in the hands of Asian scientists calculated that the region was most likely populated as a single wave of historical migration. This overturned the dominant theory supported by Western-led international projects that divided Asian populations. The PASNP thus mapped the metageography of Pan-Asianism through big data computation.

Acknowledgments

This article was supported by the Fetzer Franklin Trust project on Culture and Cognition, the National University of Singapore-Global Asia Institute project on Mapping the Technological and Cultural Landscape of Scientific Development in Asia (grant AC-2010-1-004), and the John Templeton Foundation project on Religion's Impact on Human Life. Special thanks to Gregory Clancey, Michael Fischer, and three anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. Thanks also to Min-Yen Kan and Huy Hoang Nhat Do for technical advice. A draft of this article was presented on 6 January 2011 at the NUS conference “Asian Biopoleis: Biotechnology and Biomedicine as Emergent Forms of Life and Practice.” Publication was also supported by the Asian Biopoleis Project, funded by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, and the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Division of the Office of the Deputy President (Research and Technology) at the National University of Singapore, Grant Number MOE2009-T2-2-013. Special thanks to John Moffett at the Needham Research Institute for providing Figure 1.

Notes

 1 See Pomeranz 2001 and Horkheimer and Adorno 2002. For a scientometric analysis on the metageography of Asia, see Cho et al. (2013).

 2 Bharat Tirtha (Indian Pilgrimage) was first published as a poem titled “Matri-abhishek” in the periodical Prabasi in July 1910 and was included in the Bengali edition of Gitanjali (Song Offerings) as “Bharat Tirtha”; the collection was published in Calcutta by Indian Publishing House a month later with 157 poems and songs, 137 of which Tagore had composed in ninety days.

 3 A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is a mutated variation in a single link of a DNA chain, used as a genetic marker for studying individuals or populations.

 4 The lead author provided interviewees and correspondents with National University of Singapore participant information forms and requested permission for direct quotes.

 5 See Hanson (2011) on the contested meaning of the Han in Chinese medicine. Doctors asserted a southern regional identity through the creation of new categories of disease such as warm factor disorders. Modern biomedicine largely ignores long-held distinctions about southern Chinese and northern Chinese. Philip Cho suggested at a talk by Herbert Gottweis (9 April 2010) on Taiwanese biobanking that the category “Han” has become all-inclusive to maximize marketing potential.

 6 The agencies sponsoring the Korean genomics research program were the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, and the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation.

 7 Huasheng Xiao, Shanghai Biochip Corporation, interview with Philip Cho, 4 November 2010.

 8 Zhu Chen later became China's minister of health.

 9 Ying Wang, Chinese National Human Genome Center, Shanghai, interview with Philip Cho, 3 November 2010; Wentao Yuan, Genetics Department Bead Lab Group, Chinese National Human Genome Center and Shanghai Biochip Corporation, interview with Philip Cho, 3 November 2010.

10 Decades of genetics research have not changed the categorization of the fifty-six ethnicities in China.

11 Suthat Fucharoen, e-mail correspondence with Philip Cho, 11 September 2012.

12 Giulia Kennedy, interview with Philip Cho, 13 September 2012.

13 Fucharoen correspondence.

14 Jong Bhak, e-mail correspondence with Philip Cho and Nathan Bullock, 19 August 2012.

15 Bhak correspondence.

16 Fucharoen correspondence.

17 Sumio Sugano, e-mail correspondence with Philip Cho, 31 August 2012. By “Old Japanese,” Sugano means the Jomon, hunter-gatherers who populated the archipelago about 10,000 years ago. By “New Japanese,” he refers to the Yayoi, rice farmers who, according to him, migrated from the continent and merged with the Jomon about 2,500–2,000 years ago.

18 Sugano correspondence. He points to the divergence in shared feeling as a result of recent history within the past 150 years.

19 Kennedy interview.

20 Wayne Mitchell, Genome Institute of Singapore, interview with Philip Cho, 5 October 2010; Mitchell, e-mail correspondence with Philip Cho, 11 September 2010.

21 “Dujeychugh jagh nIv yItuHQo'!” (There is nothing shameful in falling before a superior enemy!)—Klingon maxim, which they applied to the Borg.

22 Distance-based clustering simply groups data points according to a threshold distance. Model-based clustering algorithms like Structure assume that some principles or governing parameters are generating the probability of the observed results. Structure's basic formula is a conditional probability model in which the probability of genotypes of the (1,928) sampled individuals X, is governed by the parameters Z and P. Z is a vector denoting the unknown populations of origin of an individual i. P is a three-dimensional vector p _klj equal to the frequency of allele j at locus l in population k. K is the number of clusters or populations into which the 1,928 samples are partitioned. In an admixture model, a sample can simultaneously be assigned a different probability of belonging to each of the population clusters.

23 Bhak correspondence, 4 September 2012.