Tag Archives: gene_variants

Who’s the boss?

A news focus in Science Magazine asks “Who’s the queen? Ask the genes” and shows new research that in some social insects nature, not nurture, determines whether offspring becomes worker or royalty.
I am not aware of any genetic studies of bosses but there might be also inherited personality traits in humans that favor a certain behavior.
Given my interest in a German gene-test law and the corresponding passivity of the German government, I am now proposing a “Biobank German Bundestag” that will allow me to go for gene variants that make our representatives different from us, the commonalty. I am sure that we will have a gene test law within 12 months …

Who will survive?

When looking at gene variants in a population we may forget that even having a perfect sampling scheme this will not be an unbiased view of the human genome. Earlier studies suggested that up to 75% of conceptions are lost during early development; a further indicator of an biased view are unexplained cases of departure from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.
Selective survival during early pregnancy is still a terra incognita and except of studies in the Hutterites I am not aware of any (modern) study that looked at selective survival.
A study of Grant Montgomery now shows fresh data on genomewide allele sharing in 1,592 DZ twins from Australia and 336 DZ pairs from the Netherlands.
It is somewhat disappointing that there is no excess allele sharing in the HLA region nor somewhere else in the genome. Maybe further studies can do that a high resolution than with just 359 microsatellite marker?