Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics

About: Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics is a facility organization based out in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Genome-wide association study. The organization has 2122 authors who have published 4269 publications receiving 433899 citations.

Genome-wide association studies in mice

Abstract: Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have transformed the field of human genetics and have led to the discovery of hundreds of genes that are implicated in human disease The technological advances that drove this revolution are now poised to transform genetic studies in model organisms, including mice However, the design of GWASs in mouse strains is fundamentally different from the design of human GWASs, creating new challenges and opportunities This Review gives an overview of the novel study designs for mouse GWASs, which dramatically improve both the statistical power and resolution compared to classical gene-mapping approaches

Exploring the developmental overnutrition hypothesis using parental-offspring associations and FTO as an instrumental variable

Abstract: Background The developmental overnutrition hypothesis suggests that greater maternal obesity during pregnancy results in increased offspring adiposity in later life. If true, this would result in the obesity epidemic progressing across generations irrespective of environmental or genetic changes. It is therefore important to robustly test this hypothesis.

A genome-wide screen for susceptibility loci in ankylosing spondylitis

Abstract: Objective. To localize the regions containing genes that determine susceptibility to ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Methods. One hundred five white British families with 121 affected sibling pairs with AS were recruited, largely from the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases AS database. A genome-wide linkage screen was undertaken using 254 highly polymorphic microsatellite markers from the Medical Research Council (UK) (MRC) set. The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region was studied more intensively using 5 microsatellites lying within the HLA class III region and HLA-DRB1 typing. The Analyze package was used for 2-point analysis, and GeneHunter for multipoint analysis. Results. When only the MRC set was considered, 11 markers in 7 regions achieved a P value of ≤0.01. The maximum logarithm of odds score obtained was 3.8 (P = 1.4 x 10-5) using marker D6S273, which lies in the HLA class III region. A further marker used in mapping of the MHC class III region achieved a LOD score of 8.1 (P = 1 x 10-9). Nine of 118 affected sibling pairs (7.6%) did not share parental haplotypes identical by descent across the MHC, suggesting that only 31% of the susceptibility to AS is coded by genes linked to the MHC. The maximum non-MHC LOD score obtained was 2.6 (P = 0.0003) for marker D16S422. Conclusion. The results of this study confirm the strong linkage of the MHC with AS, and provide suggestive evidence regarding the presence and location of non-MHC genes influencing susceptibility to the disease.

Structure of HIV-2 reverse transcriptase at 2.35-Å resolution and the mechanism of resistance to non-nucleoside inhibitors

Abstract: The HIV-2 serotype of HIV is a cause of disease in parts of the West African population, and there is evidence for its spread to Europe and Asia. HIV-2 reverse transcriptase (RT) demonstrates an intrinsic resistance to non-nucleoside RT inhibitors (NNRTIs), one of two classes of anti-AIDS drugs that target the viral RT. We report the crystal structure of HIV-2 RT to 2.35 Å resolution, which reveals molecular details of the resistance to NNRTIs. HIV-2 RT has a similar overall fold to HIV-1 RT but has structural differences within the “NNRTI pocket” at both conserved and nonconserved residues. The structure points to the role of sequence differences that can give rise to unfavorable inhibitor contacts or destabilization of part of the binding pocket at positions 101, 106, 138, 181, 188, and 190. We also present evidence that the conformation of Ile-181 compared with the HIV-1 Tyr-181 could be a significant contributory factor to this inherent drug resistance of HIV-2 to NNRTIs. The availability of a refined structure of HIV-2 RT will provide a stimulus for the structure-based design of novel non-nucleoside inhibitors that could be used against HIV-2 infection.

emClarity: software for high-resolution cryo-electron tomography and subtomogram averaging.

Abstract: Macromolecular complexes are intrinsically flexible and often challenging to purify for structure determination by single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Such complexes can be studied by cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) combined with subtomogram alignment and classification, which in exceptional cases achieves subnanometer resolution, yielding insight into structure-function relationships. However, it remains challenging to apply this approach to specimens that exhibit conformational or compositional heterogeneity or are present in low abundance. To address this, we developed emClarity ( https://github.com/bHimes/emClarity/wiki ), a GPU-accelerated image-processing package featuring an iterative tomographic tilt-series refinement algorithm that uses subtomograms as fiducial markers and a 3D-sampling-function-compensated, multi-scale principal component analysis classification method. We demonstrate that our approach offers substantial improvement in the resolution of maps and in the separation of different functional states of macromolecular complexes compared with current state-of-the-art software.