Stargardt disease (STGD, also known as fundus flavimaculatus; FFM) is an autosomal recessive retinal disorder characterized by a juvenile-onset macular dystrophy, alterations of the peripheral retina, and subretinal deposition of lipofuscin-like material. A gene encoding an ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter was mapped to the 2-cM (centiMorgan) interval at 1p13-p21 previously shown by linkage analysis to harbour the STGD gene. This gene, ABCR, is expressed exclusively and at high levels in the retina, in rod but not cone photoreceptors, as detected by in situ hybridization. Mutational analysis of ABCR in STGD families revealed a total of 19 different mutations including homozygous mutations in two families with consanguineous parentage. These data indicate that ABCR is the causal gene of STGD/FFM.

People who begin daily smoking at an early age are at greater risk of long-term nicotine addiction. We tested the hypothesis that associations between nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) genetic variants and nicotine dependence assessed in adulthood will be stronger among smokers who began daily nicotine exposure during adolescence. We compared nicotine addiction—measured by the Fagerstrom Test of Nicotine Dependence—in three cohorts of long-term smokers recruited in Utah, Wisconsin, and by the NHLBI Lung Health Study, using a candidate-gene approach with the neuronal nAChR subunit genes. This SNP panel included common coding variants and haplotypes detected in eight α and three β nAChR subunit genes found in European American populations. In the 2,827 long-term smokers examined, common susceptibility and protective haplotypes at the CHRNA5-A3-B4 locus were associated with nicotine dependence severity (p = 2.0×10−5; odds ratio = 1.82; 95% confidence interval 1.39–2.39) in subjects who began daily smoking at or before the age of 16, an exposure period that results in a more severe form of adult nicotine dependence. A substantial shift in susceptibility versus protective diplotype frequency (AA versus BC = 17%, AA versus CC = 27%) was observed in the group that began smoking by age 16. This genetic effect was not observed in subjects who began daily nicotine use after the age of 16. These results establish a strong mechanistic link among early nicotine exposure, common CHRNA5-A3-B4 haplotypes, and adult nicotine addiction in three independent populations of European origins. The identification of an age-dependent susceptibility haplotype reinforces the importance of preventing early exposure to tobacco through public health policies.

As a typical mesophile, Escherichia coli can maintain balanced growth between approximately 10 and 49°C (19). In the range of approximately 21 to 37°C, the rate of E. coli growth varies as a simple function of temperature (19). Raising the temperature above 40°C leads to progressively slower growth rates and changes in the cellular content of many proteins (30, 31). The adaptation processes that occur on a shift to high temperature include an increased expression of a set of genes, called heat shock genes, many of which are highly conserved among procaryotic and eucaryotic organisms. These genes are dispersed throughout the chromosome, and their products perform various functions in the cell, most of which are not clearly understood thus far (12,16,30,31,34). The transcription of the majority of these genes is positively regulated by the product of the rpoH gene (previously known also as htpR or hin; for a review, see references 30 and 31), the ar32 subunit of the RNA polymerase holoenzyme (6,17). Some of these genes are also essential for bacterial growth under normal temperature conditions, for example, the rpoD gene, which codes for the cr70 subunit of RNA polymerase (30, 31), or grpE, which is essential for the replication of bacteriophage X but which plays an otherwise unknown role in E. coli physiology (D. Ang and C. Georgopoulos, submitted for publication). Several heat shock genes, like lysU, which codes for an alternate form of lysyl-tRNA synthetase (30,31,38), or lon, which codes for an ATP-dependent protease (26), are not absolutely essential for bacterial growth. There is also a class of heat shock genes that is conditionally dispensable at low temperatures; i.e., deletion mutants can be constructed at low temperatures but they grow poorly and rapidly accumulate extragenic suppressors (e.g., dnaK [7a] and dnaJ [S. Sell and C. Georgopoulos, unpublished data]).Apart from the canonical heat shock genes, the rpoH regulatory gene itself is indispensable for cell adaptation to high temperatures (9). It is also known from two-dimensional electrophoresis of total E. coli proteins that there are other * Corresponding author.

The number of de novo mutations (DNMs) found in an offspring's genome increases with both paternal and maternal age. But does the rate of mutation accumulation in human gametes differ across families? Using sequencing data from 33 large, three-generation CEPH families, we observed significant variability in parental age effects on DNM counts across families, ranging from 0.19 to 3.24 DNMs per year. Additionally, we found that ~3% of DNMs originated following primordial germ cell specification in a parent, and differed from non-mosaic germline DNMs in their mutational spectra. We also discovered that nearly 10% of candidate DNMs in the second generation were post-zygotic, and present in both somatic and germ cells; these gonosomal mutations occurred at equivalent frequencies on both parental haplotypes. Our results demonstrate that rates of germline mutation accumulation vary among families with similar ancestry, and confirm that post-zygotic mosaicism is a substantial source of human DNM.

Human identification from biological material is largely dependent on the ability to characterize genetic polymorphisms in DNA. Unfortunately, DNA can degrade in the environment, sometimes below the level at which it can be amplified by PCR. Protein however is chemically more robust than DNA and can persist for longer periods. Protein also contains genetic variation in the form of single amino acid polymorphisms. These can be used to infer the status of non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism alleles. To demonstrate this, we used mass spectrometry-based shotgun proteomics to characterize hair shaft proteins in 66 European-American subjects. A total of 596 single nucleotide polymorphism alleles were correctly imputed in 32 loci from 22 genes of subjects’ DNA and directly validated using Sanger sequencing. Estimates of the probability of resulting individual non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism allelic profiles in the European population, using the product rule, resulted in a maximum power of discrimination of 1 in 12,500. Imputed non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism profiles from European–American subjects were considerably less frequent in the African population (maximum likelihood ratio = 11,000). The converse was true for hair shafts collected from an additional 10 subjects with African ancestry, where some profiles were more frequent in the African population. Genetically variant peptides were also identified in hair shaft datasets from six archaeological skeletal remains (up to 260 years old). This study demonstrates that quantifiable measures of identity discrimination and biogeographic background can be obtained from detecting genetically variant peptides in hair shaft protein, including hair from bioarchaeological contexts.

Idiopathic juxtafoveal retinal telangiectasis type 2 (macular telangiectasia type 2; MacTel) is a rare neurovascular degenerative retinal disease. To identify genetic susceptibility loci for MacTel, we performed a genomewide association study (GWAS) with 476 cases and 1733 controls of European ancestry. Genome-wide significant associations (P < 5 × 10 -8 ) were identified at 3 independent loci (rs73171800 at 5q14.3, P = 7.74 × 10 -17 ; rs715 at 2q34, P = 9.97 × 10 -14 ; rs477992 at 1p12, P = 2.60 × 10 -12 ) and then replicated (P < 0.01) in an independent cohort of 172 cases and 1134 controls. The 5q14.3 locus is known to associate with variation in retinal vascular diameter, and the 2q34 and 1p12 loci have been implicated in the glycine/serine metabolic pathway. We subsequently found significant differences of blood serum levels of glycine (P = 4.04 × 10 -6 ) and serine (P = 2.48 × 10 -4 ) between MacTel cases and controls.MacTel cases typically present at 40-60 years with abnormal right-angled juxtafoveolar capillaries and parafoveal telangiectasias. It is an uncommon disease with a 0.0045-0.1% population prevalence and no obvious sex bias [1][2][3] . Retinal lesions typically co-present with MacTel, including retinal transparency, outer retinal and choroidal neovascularization, lamellar holes or foveal cysts, photoreceptor dysfunction, minimal exudation, yellow-white parafoveal crystals, and retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) pigmentation abnormalities and atrophy. Central vision impairment and decreased visual acuity are the usual clinical outcomes. MacTel is a bilateral disease, but asymmetry of the eyes for disease severity and presence of lesions is possible. The lesions also occur in 0.06-1.18% of the general population 2 .Risk factors for MacTel are largely unknown, however associations have been observed with smoking 2,4 , diabetes 5,6 , high BMI 6 , hypertension 6 and obesity 6 .Observations of MacTel affected monozygotic twins 4,[7][8][9] , and multiplex families with vertical transmissions of MacTel 1,5,[9][10][11][12] , suggest a genetic etiology for the disease. The late-age of onset, low penetrance and variable phenotype as exemplified by asymptomatic affected relatives 9 , and positive and negative misdiagnoses, complicate the discovery of genetic variants predisposing to MacTel. We previously screened 27 candidate genes in 8 unrelated MacTel cases but found no causative mutations 13 . Linkage analysis of 17 families with MacTel individuals identified a 15.3Mb locus on chromosome 1q41-42.2 (LOD=3.45), however sequencing of the underlying genes revealed no causative mutations 14 . Results Discovery GWAS stageThe GWAS discovery stage included genotype data for 6,312,048 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) after quality control and imputation (including 1,093,805 SNPs genotyped on the Illumina Omni SNP chips) in 476 MacTel cases and 1,733 controls (see Table 1 and Online Methods). This sample size was large enough to achieve power of at least 0.90 for risk variants with allele frequencies of 0.10-...

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Nitrate-fed and dark-stressed bean (Phaseolus vulgaris)