This web page was produced as an assignment for an undergraduate course at Davidson College.
Ingrid Wagnon's Genomics
Home Page
Assignment 1 :
Developmental Disorders and de novo Mutations
The research project reported in the article "Prevalence and architecture of de novo mutations in developmental disorders" (McRae et al. 2017) was to find de novo mutations (DNMs) of crucial developmental genes in patients affected by severe, unknown developmental disorder. “De novo mutations” means that the mutations aren’t present in parent’s genome. These mutations can be present in the parent’s gametes or can occur during the development of the zygote. Besides identifying the genes touched by DNMs, they also tried to identify main factors that can influence the DNMs frequency.
In this study, the main point is not to test a hypothesis but to discover new mutations that could have a role in undiagnosed developmental disorders. It required the combination of several data base to integrate all the information concerning the phenotypes of the individuals, the already-known mutations, the genomes of the patients…
Two principal genomic technologies were used during this study: Exome sequencing and the examination of Single Nucleotide variants, insertions and deletions. For the exome sequencing, they selected the targeted sections of DNA (which are exons) and sequenced them using the Illumina HiSeq instruments. They analyzed data concerning Single Nucleotide by comparing the different sequence of DNA with each other.
They identified 94 genes containing DNM linked to developmental disorders, among which 14 weren’t suspected before. It has been estimated than 2 to 5 percent of new born infants are concerned by developmental disorders. The findings of this study can be very useful by helping psychiatrists to establish their diagnosis and their therapy choices. The rare disorders could be categorized and identified as long as we know which genes are being mutated.
I found this project quiet interesting taking into account all
the data
that were used and analyzed. I also chose this article because I found
Developmental Disorders (and all psychiatric disorders in general)
very
intriguing. I think the more we explore the causes of psychiatric
disorders,
their mechanisms and all their possible mutations in details, the more
we have
a chance to develop appropriate and efficient therapies, and the more
we have a
chance to find relevant elements that could help in the understanding
of other
disorders (not only developmental and maybe not only psychiatric) like
autism for example. I also think
that trying to find some risk factors is interesting in order to work
upstream
the disorders and raise awareness among parents (make some
prevention).
Genomics
Page
Biology Home Page
Email Questions or Comments: inwagnon@davidson.edu
© Copyright 2016 Department of Biology, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28035