Latin Americans are underrepresented in genetic studies, increasing disparities in personalized genomic medicine. Despite available genetic data from thousands of Latin Americans, accessing and navigating the bureaucratic hurdles for consent or access remains challenging. To address this, we introduce the Genetics of Latin American Diversity (GLAD) Project, compiling genome-wide information from 53,738 Latin Americans across 39 studies representing 46 geographical regions. Through GLAD, we identified heterogeneous ancestry composition and recent gene flow across the Americas. Additionally, we developed GLAD-match, a simulated annealing-based algorithm, to match the genetic background of external samples to our database, sharing summary statistics (i.e., allele and haplotype frequencies) without transferring individual-level genotypes. Finally, we demonstrate the potential of GLAD as a critical resource for evaluating statistical genetic software in the presence of admixture. By providing this resource, we promote genomic research in Latin Americans and contribute to the promises of personalized medicine to more people.
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•We present GLADdb, a collection of 53,000 Latin American individuals•We identified ancestry-biased migration across the Americas•We present GLAD-match to identify similarities without sharing individual genotypes•GLADdb is a valuable resource for evaluating genetic epidemiology software
In this article, Borda, Loech, Guo, and Laboulaye et al. developed the Genetics of Latin American Diversity database (GLADdb), which includes 53,000 Latin Americans. With GLADdb, they explored two gaps in Latino genomics: (1) population structure and recent gene flow and (2) the underrepresentation of Latinos in genetic epidemiology
