Moroccan genome project: genomic insight into a North African population.

ABSTRACT: Africa's 1.5 billion people are underrepresented in genomic databases. The African Genome Variation Project exclusively focuses on Sub-Saharan populations, making Morocco, located in North Africa, a valuable site for studying genetic diversity. Understanding genetic variation and customized therapy requires population-specific reference genomes. This study presents Phase 1 results from the Moroccan Genome Project (MGP), which sequenced 109 Moroccan genomes. We report over 27 million variants, including 1.4 million novel ones, of which 15,378 are highly prevalent in the Moroccan population. Furthermore, we propose a Moroccan Major Allele Reference Genome (MMARG), generated using high-coverage consensus sequences from the 109 whole genomes. This MMARG represents more accurately the Moroccan

SUBMITTER: El Fahime E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11982406 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature