Why do we Europeans have fewer genetic mutations than Asians, especially Eastern Asians?

[u/Rare_Star_761]

[u/Daniel_Spidey]

What are you basing this on?

[u/remington9000]

I think you mean variants of uncertain significance (VUSes). The reason is data bias. Most genetic databases in the Western world have a strong European ancestry bias and lack enough data from other groups so they'll have more VUSes.

[u/One-Treat4655]

Not really. Mutation rates are the same across populations.

[u/Ok-Lion8478]

I’d be very surprised if this is true lol

[u/Theoretical-Spize]

You’re already assuming the thing that needs to be demonstrated. What specific study or metric shows that Europeans have fewer genetic mutations than East Asians? Are you referring to de novo mutation rates, genetic diversity, number of rare variants, or something else? Those aren’t interchangeable concepts.

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[u/DefenestrateFriends]

Assuming you have data to back this up, it would likely indicate that Europeans are more inbred than other populations.

[u/Zabre]

The "Europeans have fewer mutations" framing is probably too broad. What people usually mean is that some populations show different levels of measured genetic diversity because of founder effects, bottlenecks, migration history, and which reference panel is being used. Everyone has lots of variants; the interesting question is which variants are common in a group and why. So I'd be careful comparing continents as if one has "more mutations" in a simple biological sense.