Dec 16, 2015 08:06 PM
Researchers find out cause of mutations that are not in genetic material
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...105303.htm
RELEASE: Proteins are like bricks that form our cells and they are built by the orders given by our genetic material, DNA. In human diseases, eventually DNA alterations modify proteins and they don't do their normal function, either by excess or defect. But recently we have started to find alterations of proteins without an obvious damage of the gene that produces them.
An article published in Oncogene led by Manel Esteller, director of the Epigenetics and Cancer Biology Program of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), ICREA researcher and Professor of Genetics at the University of Barcelona, ??provides an explanation for this phenomenon: existence of alterations in an intermediate molecule (RNA) which transfers the information contained in the DNA to protein.
"We found that 5-10% of lung tumors, instead of having the normal dose of a gene (two copies, one on the maternal chromosome and another in his father) have an overdose of the same, around 10 extra copies of the gene, "says Manel Esteller, director of the study.
"The gene identified (referred ADAR1) regulates the level of mutations in RNA, and it is a publisher gene. People with an excess of this gene have an imbalance in the composition of this molecule just causing abnormal proteins that contribute to tumor growth. If we study these altered target genes we would not see mutations in their DNA but we will see alterated proteins because of these sequence alterations of the intermediate molecule, RNA.
"Graphically we could say that there has been a problem of 'Lost in Translation'" explains Esteller and he ends: "Now it will be important to know whether this type of alteration is common in the rest of human tumors, if it occurs significantly in other diseases and if there is any way to use this knowledge to better treatment."
New twist in tale of dogs' origins
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...082339.htm
RELEASE: The origin of dogs has inspired a lingering controversy in academia. Where and when did dogs first split off from wolves? One of the top dogs in this dispute, population genetics expert Peter Savolainen of Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology, isn't about to roll over. He hopes his latest research will finally settle the matter.
Some researchers say canines first split off from wolves in the Middle East; others say it happened in Europe. But Savolainen has long held that dogs originated in South East Asia alone, and he says his team has compiled new evidence that confirms his earlier findings.
The study concludes that the split with wolves occurred about 33,000 years ago.
Savolainen's earlier studies were based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA. But recently other researchers have used data from nuclear DNA to refute those findings, arguing that dogs originated in the Middle East, Central Asia or Europe.
But apparently, those researchers were thrown off the scent, according to Savolainen. The data they relied on did not include samples from South East Asia, he says. So if, as Savolainen says, dogs did indeed come from South East Asia, these studies would not have been able to detect it.
"Which is why we analysed the entire nuclear genome of a global sample collection from 46 dogs, which includes samples from southern China and South East Asia," he says. "We then found out that dogs from South East Asia stand out from all other dog populations, because they have the highest genetic diversity and are genetically closest to the wolf."
Savolainen says this provides strong evidence that the dog originated in South East Asia, which confirms his earlier studies of Mitochondrial DNA.
"We also found that the global dog population is based on two important events: the dog and wolf populations first began to split off about 33,000 years ago in South East Asia. The global spread of dogs followed about 18,000 years later.
He says one explanation for the split between dogs and wolves 33,000 years ago could be that the wolf population became divided and the south Chinese wolf developed into dogs. In that case, it is possible the global spread of dogs out of South East Asia is associated with domestication.
"The dog's story thus appears to have begun 33,000 years ago, but the exact path to the fully-domesticated dogs that spread throughout the world 15,000 years ago is not yet clear."
In US, poverty dampens genetic influence on IQ
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...082154.htm
RELEASE: An analysis of data gathered from 14 independent studies indicates that the influence of genes on intelligence varies according to people's social class in the US, but not in Western Europe or Australia. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Research suggests that genes and environment both play a critical role in shaping a person's intelligence. A longstanding hypothesis in the field of behavioral genetics holds that our potential intelligence, as set by our genes, is more fully expressed in environments that are supportive and nurturing, but is suppressed in conditions of poverty and disadvantages. While some studies have provided evidence supporting this hypothesis, others have not.
To better understand the impact of social class on the link between genes and intelligence, psychological scientists Elliot Tucker-Drob of the University of Texas at Austin and Timothy Bates at the University of Edinburgh conducted a meta-analysis, combining data from all available published and unpublished studies.
To be included in the meta-analysis, the studies had to contain an objective measure of intelligence and a measure of participants' family socioeconomic status in childhood. The studies also had to include participants that varied in their genetic relatedness (i.e., siblings versus identical twins) so that the researchers would be able to statistically disentangle genetic and environmental influences.
Tucker-Drob and Bates analyzed data from a total of 24,926 pairs of twins and siblings who had participated in studies conducted in the United States, Australia, England, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands.
The researchers found that the relationship between genes, socioeconomic status, and intelligence depended on which country the participants were from.
"The hypothesis that the genetic influence on intelligence depends on socioeconomic status was not supported in studies outside of the US," says Tucker-Drob. "In the Netherlands, there was even evidence suggestive of the opposite effect."
Importantly, the meta-analysis did not show any evidence that other factors -- such as age of testing, whether the tests measured achievement and knowledge or intelligence, whether the tests were of a single ability or a composite cognitive measures -- influenced the results.
The researchers suggest that the stark difference between the US and other countries might be explained by differences in how low socioeconomic status in experienced in the countries. That is, the relatively robust healthcare and social-welfare programs in Western Europe and Australia may buffer some of the negative environmental effects typically associated with poverty.
According to Bates, a primary question for future research will be to identify the specific aspects of a society that "break the link between social class and the expression of genetic potentials for intellectual development."
"Once such characteristics are identified, they could inform policies directed at narrowing test score gaps and promoting all of the positive consequences of higher IQ, such as health, wealth, and progress in science, art, and technology," he concludes.
Small fish species evolved rapidly following 1964 Alaska earthquake: Genomic technology has helped document rapid evolutionary transformation of threespine stickleback in less than 50 years
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...165724.htm
RELEASE: Evolution is usually thought of as occurring over long time periods, but it also can happen quickly. Consider a tiny fish whose transformation after the 1964 Alaskan earthquake was uncovered by University of Oregon scientists and their University of Alaska collaborators.
The fish, seawater-native threespine stickleback, in just decades experienced changes in both their genes and visible external traits such as eyes, shape, color, bone size and body armor when they adapted to survive in fresh water. The earthquake -- 9.2 on the Richter scale and second highest ever recorded -- caused geological uplift that captured marine fish in newly formed freshwater ponds on islands in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska south of Anchorage.
The findings -- detailed in a paper available online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- are important for understanding the impacts of sudden environmental change on organisms in nature, says UO biologist William Cresko, whose lab led the National Science Foundation-funded research.
"We've now moved the timescale of the evolution of stickleback fish to decades, and it may even be sooner than that," said Cresko, who also is the UO's associate vice president for research and a member of the UO Institute of Ecology and Evolution. "In some of the populations that we studied we found evidence of changes in fewer than even 10 years. For the field, it indicates that evolutionary change can happen quickly, and this likely has been happening with other organisms as well."
Survival in a new environment is not new for stickleback, a small silver-colored fish found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. A Cresko-led team, using a rapid genome-sequencing technology (RAD-seq) created at the UO with collaborator Eric Johnson, showed in 2010 how stickleback had evolved genetically to survive in fresh water after glaciers receded 13,000 years ago. For the new study, researchers asked how rapidly such adaptation could happen.
The newly published research involved stickleback collected by University of Alaska researchers from freshwater ponds on hard-to-reach marine islands that were seismically thrust up several meters in the 1964 quake.
RAD-seq technology again was used to study the new samples. Genetic changes were similar to those found in the earlier study, but they had occurred in less than 50 years in multiple, separate stickleback populations. Stickleback, the researchers concluded, have evolved as a species over the long haul with regions of their genomes alternatively honed for either freshwater or marine life.
"This research perhaps opens a window on how climate change could affect all kinds of species," said Susan L. Bassham, a Cresko lab senior research associate who also was co-author of the 2010 paper. "What we've shown here is that organisms -- even vertebrates, with long generation times -- can respond very fast to environmental change.
"And this is not just a plastic change, like becoming tan in the sun; the genome itself is being rapidly reshaped," she said. "Stickleback fish can adapt on this time scale because the species as a whole has evolved, over millions of years, a genetic bag of tricks for invading and surviving in new freshwater habitats. This hidden genetic diversity is always waiting for its chance, in the sea."
Co-authors with Bassham and Cresko on the PNAS paper were Emily A. Lescak of UA-Anchorage and Fairbanks; Julian Catchen of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Ofer Gelmond, Frank A. von Hippel and Mary L. Sherbick of UA-Anchorage.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...105303.htm
RELEASE: Proteins are like bricks that form our cells and they are built by the orders given by our genetic material, DNA. In human diseases, eventually DNA alterations modify proteins and they don't do their normal function, either by excess or defect. But recently we have started to find alterations of proteins without an obvious damage of the gene that produces them.
An article published in Oncogene led by Manel Esteller, director of the Epigenetics and Cancer Biology Program of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), ICREA researcher and Professor of Genetics at the University of Barcelona, ??provides an explanation for this phenomenon: existence of alterations in an intermediate molecule (RNA) which transfers the information contained in the DNA to protein.
"We found that 5-10% of lung tumors, instead of having the normal dose of a gene (two copies, one on the maternal chromosome and another in his father) have an overdose of the same, around 10 extra copies of the gene, "says Manel Esteller, director of the study.
"The gene identified (referred ADAR1) regulates the level of mutations in RNA, and it is a publisher gene. People with an excess of this gene have an imbalance in the composition of this molecule just causing abnormal proteins that contribute to tumor growth. If we study these altered target genes we would not see mutations in their DNA but we will see alterated proteins because of these sequence alterations of the intermediate molecule, RNA.
"Graphically we could say that there has been a problem of 'Lost in Translation'" explains Esteller and he ends: "Now it will be important to know whether this type of alteration is common in the rest of human tumors, if it occurs significantly in other diseases and if there is any way to use this knowledge to better treatment."
New twist in tale of dogs' origins
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...082339.htm
RELEASE: The origin of dogs has inspired a lingering controversy in academia. Where and when did dogs first split off from wolves? One of the top dogs in this dispute, population genetics expert Peter Savolainen of Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology, isn't about to roll over. He hopes his latest research will finally settle the matter.
Some researchers say canines first split off from wolves in the Middle East; others say it happened in Europe. But Savolainen has long held that dogs originated in South East Asia alone, and he says his team has compiled new evidence that confirms his earlier findings.
The study concludes that the split with wolves occurred about 33,000 years ago.
Savolainen's earlier studies were based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA. But recently other researchers have used data from nuclear DNA to refute those findings, arguing that dogs originated in the Middle East, Central Asia or Europe.
But apparently, those researchers were thrown off the scent, according to Savolainen. The data they relied on did not include samples from South East Asia, he says. So if, as Savolainen says, dogs did indeed come from South East Asia, these studies would not have been able to detect it.
"Which is why we analysed the entire nuclear genome of a global sample collection from 46 dogs, which includes samples from southern China and South East Asia," he says. "We then found out that dogs from South East Asia stand out from all other dog populations, because they have the highest genetic diversity and are genetically closest to the wolf."
Savolainen says this provides strong evidence that the dog originated in South East Asia, which confirms his earlier studies of Mitochondrial DNA.
"We also found that the global dog population is based on two important events: the dog and wolf populations first began to split off about 33,000 years ago in South East Asia. The global spread of dogs followed about 18,000 years later.
He says one explanation for the split between dogs and wolves 33,000 years ago could be that the wolf population became divided and the south Chinese wolf developed into dogs. In that case, it is possible the global spread of dogs out of South East Asia is associated with domestication.
"The dog's story thus appears to have begun 33,000 years ago, but the exact path to the fully-domesticated dogs that spread throughout the world 15,000 years ago is not yet clear."
In US, poverty dampens genetic influence on IQ
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...082154.htm
RELEASE: An analysis of data gathered from 14 independent studies indicates that the influence of genes on intelligence varies according to people's social class in the US, but not in Western Europe or Australia. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Research suggests that genes and environment both play a critical role in shaping a person's intelligence. A longstanding hypothesis in the field of behavioral genetics holds that our potential intelligence, as set by our genes, is more fully expressed in environments that are supportive and nurturing, but is suppressed in conditions of poverty and disadvantages. While some studies have provided evidence supporting this hypothesis, others have not.
To better understand the impact of social class on the link between genes and intelligence, psychological scientists Elliot Tucker-Drob of the University of Texas at Austin and Timothy Bates at the University of Edinburgh conducted a meta-analysis, combining data from all available published and unpublished studies.
To be included in the meta-analysis, the studies had to contain an objective measure of intelligence and a measure of participants' family socioeconomic status in childhood. The studies also had to include participants that varied in their genetic relatedness (i.e., siblings versus identical twins) so that the researchers would be able to statistically disentangle genetic and environmental influences.
Tucker-Drob and Bates analyzed data from a total of 24,926 pairs of twins and siblings who had participated in studies conducted in the United States, Australia, England, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands.
The researchers found that the relationship between genes, socioeconomic status, and intelligence depended on which country the participants were from.
"The hypothesis that the genetic influence on intelligence depends on socioeconomic status was not supported in studies outside of the US," says Tucker-Drob. "In the Netherlands, there was even evidence suggestive of the opposite effect."
Importantly, the meta-analysis did not show any evidence that other factors -- such as age of testing, whether the tests measured achievement and knowledge or intelligence, whether the tests were of a single ability or a composite cognitive measures -- influenced the results.
The researchers suggest that the stark difference between the US and other countries might be explained by differences in how low socioeconomic status in experienced in the countries. That is, the relatively robust healthcare and social-welfare programs in Western Europe and Australia may buffer some of the negative environmental effects typically associated with poverty.
According to Bates, a primary question for future research will be to identify the specific aspects of a society that "break the link between social class and the expression of genetic potentials for intellectual development."
"Once such characteristics are identified, they could inform policies directed at narrowing test score gaps and promoting all of the positive consequences of higher IQ, such as health, wealth, and progress in science, art, and technology," he concludes.
Small fish species evolved rapidly following 1964 Alaska earthquake: Genomic technology has helped document rapid evolutionary transformation of threespine stickleback in less than 50 years
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...165724.htm
RELEASE: Evolution is usually thought of as occurring over long time periods, but it also can happen quickly. Consider a tiny fish whose transformation after the 1964 Alaskan earthquake was uncovered by University of Oregon scientists and their University of Alaska collaborators.
The fish, seawater-native threespine stickleback, in just decades experienced changes in both their genes and visible external traits such as eyes, shape, color, bone size and body armor when they adapted to survive in fresh water. The earthquake -- 9.2 on the Richter scale and second highest ever recorded -- caused geological uplift that captured marine fish in newly formed freshwater ponds on islands in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska south of Anchorage.
The findings -- detailed in a paper available online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- are important for understanding the impacts of sudden environmental change on organisms in nature, says UO biologist William Cresko, whose lab led the National Science Foundation-funded research.
"We've now moved the timescale of the evolution of stickleback fish to decades, and it may even be sooner than that," said Cresko, who also is the UO's associate vice president for research and a member of the UO Institute of Ecology and Evolution. "In some of the populations that we studied we found evidence of changes in fewer than even 10 years. For the field, it indicates that evolutionary change can happen quickly, and this likely has been happening with other organisms as well."
Survival in a new environment is not new for stickleback, a small silver-colored fish found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. A Cresko-led team, using a rapid genome-sequencing technology (RAD-seq) created at the UO with collaborator Eric Johnson, showed in 2010 how stickleback had evolved genetically to survive in fresh water after glaciers receded 13,000 years ago. For the new study, researchers asked how rapidly such adaptation could happen.
The newly published research involved stickleback collected by University of Alaska researchers from freshwater ponds on hard-to-reach marine islands that were seismically thrust up several meters in the 1964 quake.
RAD-seq technology again was used to study the new samples. Genetic changes were similar to those found in the earlier study, but they had occurred in less than 50 years in multiple, separate stickleback populations. Stickleback, the researchers concluded, have evolved as a species over the long haul with regions of their genomes alternatively honed for either freshwater or marine life.
"This research perhaps opens a window on how climate change could affect all kinds of species," said Susan L. Bassham, a Cresko lab senior research associate who also was co-author of the 2010 paper. "What we've shown here is that organisms -- even vertebrates, with long generation times -- can respond very fast to environmental change.
"And this is not just a plastic change, like becoming tan in the sun; the genome itself is being rapidly reshaped," she said. "Stickleback fish can adapt on this time scale because the species as a whole has evolved, over millions of years, a genetic bag of tricks for invading and surviving in new freshwater habitats. This hidden genetic diversity is always waiting for its chance, in the sea."
Co-authors with Bassham and Cresko on the PNAS paper were Emily A. Lescak of UA-Anchorage and Fairbanks; Julian Catchen of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Ofer Gelmond, Frank A. von Hippel and Mary L. Sherbick of UA-Anchorage.