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| 2. |
- Gudbjartsson, Daniel F., et al.
(författare)
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Sequence variants affecting eosinophil numbers associate with asthma and myocardial infarction
- 2009
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Ingår i: Nature Genetics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1061-4036 .- 1546-1718. ; 41:3, s. 342-347
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Eosinophils are pleiotropic multifunctional leukocytes involved in initiation and propagation of inflammatory responses and thus have important roles in the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases. Here we describe a genome-wide association scan for sequence variants affecting eosinophil counts in blood of 9,392 Icelanders. The most significant SNPs were studied further in 12,118 Europeans and 5,212 East Asians. SNPs at 2q12 (rs1420101), 2q13 (rs12619285), 3q21 (rs4857855), 5q31 (rs4143832) and 12q24 (rs3184504) reached genome-wide significance (P = 5.3 x 10(-14), 5.4 x 10(-10), 8.6 x 10(-17), 1.2 x 10(-10) and 6.5 x 10(-19), respectively). A SNP at IL1RL1 associated with asthma (P = 5.5 x 10(-12)) in a collection of ten different populations (7,996 cases and 44,890 controls). SNPs at WDR36, IL33 and MYB that showed suggestive association with eosinophil counts were also associated with atopic asthma (P = 4.2 x 10(-6), 2.2 x 10(-5) and 2.4 x 10(-4), respectively). We also found that a nonsynonymous SNP at 12q24, in SH2B3, associated significantly (P = 8.6 x 10(-8)) with myocardial infarction in six different populations (6,650 cases and 40,621 controls).
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| 3. |
- Haas, Brian J., et al.
(författare)
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Genome sequence and analysis of the Irish potato famine pathogen Phytophthora infestans
- 2009
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 461:7262, s. 393-398
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Phytophthora infestans is the most destructive pathogen of potato and a model organism for the oomycetes, a distinct lineage of fungus-like eukaryotes that are related to organisms such as brown algae and diatoms. As the agent of the Irish potato famine in the mid-nineteenth century, P. infestans has had a tremendous effect on human history, resulting in famine and population displacement(1). To this day, it affects world agriculture by causing the most destructive disease of potato, the fourth largest food crop and a critical alternative to the major cereal crops for feeding the world's population(1). Current annual worldwide potato crop losses due to late blight are conservatively estimated at $6.7 billion(2). Management of this devastating pathogen is challenged by its remarkable speed of adaptation to control strategies such as genetically resistant cultivars(3,4). Here we report the sequence of the P. infestans genome, which at similar to 240 megabases (Mb) is by far the largest and most complex genome sequenced so far in the chromalveolates. Its expansion results from a proliferation of repetitive DNA accounting for similar to 74% of the genome. Comparison with two other Phytophthora genomes showed rapid turnover and extensive expansion of specific families of secreted disease effector proteins, including many genes that are induced during infection or are predicted to have activities that alter host physiology. These fast-evolving effector genes are localized to highly dynamic and expanded regions of the P. infestans genome. This probably plays a crucial part in the rapid adaptability of the pathogen to host plants and underpins its evolutionary potential.
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- Hesselson, Stephanie E, et al.
(författare)
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Genetic variation in the proximal promoter of ABC and SLC superfamilies : liver and kidney specific expression and promoter activity predict variation
- 2009
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 4:9, s. e6942-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Membrane transporters play crucial roles in the cellular uptake and efflux of an array of small molecules including nutrients, environmental toxins, and many clinically used drugs. We hypothesized that common genetic variation in the proximal promoter regions of transporter genes contribute to observed variation in drug response. A total of 579 polymorphisms were identified in the proximal promoters (-250 to +50 bp) and flanking 5' sequence of 107 transporters in the ATP Binding Cassette (ABC) and Solute Carrier (SLC) superfamilies in 272 DNA samples from ethnically diverse populations. Many transporter promoters contained multiple common polymorphisms. Using a sliding window analysis, we observed that, on average, nucleotide diversity (pi) was lowest at approximately 300 bp upstream of the transcription start site, suggesting that this region may harbor important functional elements. The proximal promoters of transporters that were highly expressed in the liver had greater nucleotide diversity than those that were highly expressed in the kidney consistent with greater negative selective pressure on the promoters of kidney transporters. Twenty-one promoters were evaluated for activity using reporter assays. Greater nucleotide diversity was observed in promoters with strong activity compared to promoters with weak activity, suggesting that weak promoters are under more negative selective pressure than promoters with high activity. Collectively, these results suggest that the proximal promoter region of membrane transporters is rich in variation and that variants in these regions may play a role in interindividual variation in drug disposition and response.
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| 5. |
- Ma, Li-Jun, et al.
(författare)
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Genomic analysis of the basal lineage fungus Rhizopus oryzae reveals a whole-genome duplication.
- 2009
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Ingår i: PLoS genetics. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1553-7404. ; 5:7, s. e1000549-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rhizopus oryzae is the primary cause of mucormycosis, an emerging, life-threatening infection characterized by rapid angioinvasive growth with an overall mortality rate that exceeds 50%. As a representative of the paraphyletic basal group of the fungal kingdom called "zygomycetes," R. oryzae is also used as a model to study fungal evolution. Here we report the genome sequence of R. oryzae strain 99-880, isolated from a fatal case of mucormycosis. The highly repetitive 45.3 Mb genome assembly contains abundant transposable elements (TEs), comprising approximately 20% of the genome. We predicted 13,895 protein-coding genes not overlapping TEs, many of which are paralogous gene pairs. The order and genomic arrangement of the duplicated gene pairs and their common phylogenetic origin provide evidence for an ancestral whole-genome duplication (WGD) event. The WGD resulted in the duplication of nearly all subunits of the protein complexes associated with respiratory electron transport chains, the V-ATPase, and the ubiquitin-proteasome systems. The WGD, together with recent gene duplications, resulted in the expansion of multiple gene families related to cell growth and signal transduction, as well as secreted aspartic protease and subtilase protein families, which are known fungal virulence factors. The duplication of the ergosterol biosynthetic pathway, especially the major azole target, lanosterol 14alpha-demethylase (ERG11), could contribute to the variable responses of R. oryzae to different azole drugs, including voriconazole and posaconazole. Expanded families of cell-wall synthesis enzymes, essential for fungal cell integrity but absent in mammalian hosts, reveal potential targets for novel and R. oryzae-specific diagnostic and therapeutic treatments.
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