linkstream2 microblog

The #Brain #Somatic Mosaicism Network
http://science.ScienceMag.org/content/356/6336/eaal1641 Long lifespan of neurons accentuates impact of individual somatic mutations

QT:{{”
Neuropsychiatric disorders have a complex genetic architecture. Human genetic population-based studies have identified numerous heritable sequence and structural genomic variants associated with
susceptibility to neuropsychiatric disease. However, these germline variants do not fully account for disease risk. During brain development, progenitor cells undergo billions of cell divisions to generate the ~80 billion neurons in the brain. The failure to accurately repair DNA damage arising during replication,
transcription, and cellular metabolism amid this dramatic cellular expansion can lead to somatic mutations. Somatic mutations that alter subsets of neuronal transcriptomes and proteomes can, in turn, affect cell proliferation and survival and lead to neurodevelopmental disorders. The long life span of individual neurons and the direct relationship between neural circuits and behavior suggest that somatic mutations in small populations of neurons can significantly affect individual neurodevelopment. The Brain Somatic Mosaicism Network has been founded to study somatic mosaicism both in neurotypical human brains and in the context of complex neuropsychiatric disorders.” “}}

BioTechniques – The Myth of the Single Genome
http://www.biotechniques.com/news/The-Myth-of-the-Single-Genome/biotechniques-347272.html

The Myth of the Single #Genome: fetal Y chr left in women + smaller microchimerism in specific tissues
http://www.biotechniques.com/news/The-Myth-of-the-Single-Genome/biotechniques-347272.html MT @xberthet

Great @carlzimmer article on #mosaicism. However, its scale is much less than natural or cancer variation http://nyti.ms/15ymYlJ MT @darnelr

Might have been worth mentioning that the amount of somatic variation in healthy cells appears to be considerably less than the variation between people or between a tumor and normal genome.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/science/dna-double-take.html