Researchers have assembled the first-ever map of copy number variants (CNV)-- duplications, deletions or rearrangements in the genome that result in different gene copy numbers -- in African Americans. The study, appearing in linkurl:__BMC Genetics__;http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcgenet/ today, also identified two CNVs that differed in frequency between African American genomes and those in people of European descent. linkurl:Joseph McElroy,;http://www.msgenes.ucsf.edu/fellows_Joseph_McElroy_Ph.D.html a postdoc in the lab of neurologist linkurl:Jorge Oksenberg;http://www.msgenes.ucsf.edu/faculty.html at the University of California, San Francisco, and lead author, said that the study will provide a baseline informing his lab's future investigations into the genetic underpinnings of multiple sclerosis in African Americans. "The reason we wanted to [compare CNVs in African Americans and whites] is because most of the literature on this has been done in whites," he said. "On a genome-wide level, African Americans haven't been studied for diseases that are present in African American populations." McElroy and his colleagues screened the...
Interested in reading more?
Become a Member of
Receive full access to more than 35 years of archives, as well as TS Digest, digital editions of The Scientist, feature stories, and much more!