Molecular and Biochemical Genetics

From Iusmgenetics

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Revision as of 15:31, 13 October 2011

Contents

Molecular and Biochemical Genetics

Objectives

  • Important terms:
    • "Incomplete" dominance or "semi-dominant": homozygous individuals have a worse manifestation than heterozygous individuals (achondroplasia).
    • "Distinct disorder": consistent clinical and radiological findings.


  • Important concepts:
    • Types of mutations:
      • Missense: changed amino acid
      • Nonsense: introduced stop codon
      • Neutral / silent: no amino acid change
      • Polymorphisms are a population term; it means 1% of the pop has it; it does not infer whether it causes disease or not
      • RNA splicing: gain or loss of splice site
      • Regulation mutation: affects gene regulation
      • Indels: gain or loss of one or more bases; leads to frameshift if not a multiple of 3
      • Repeat expansion: repeated segment (usually 3 bases) expands as nucleotide copy / repair mechanisms get hung up
    • Haploinsufficiency:
    • Dominant-negatie effect:


  • For individual diseases, know: clinical features, mode of inheritance, genes involved / gene defect, pathogenesis, treatment (sometimes)

Review your fundamentals

Dominant Diseases

  • Dominant disease are defined as those manifested when only one allele is mutated.
    • Recall that some diseases can be both dominant and negative because of allelic heterogeneity and locus heterogeneity.
  • There are multiple ways we describe a single allele (not both copies) can cause disease:
    • Qualitative effects: the protein product gains a function.
    • Quantitative effects: the protein product is broken.
    • Combination of qualitative and quantitative.
    • Others
  • It is important to understand the disease pathogenesis in order to think wisely about treatment.

Achondroplasia

Osteogenesis imperfecta

Ehlers Danlos Syndrome

Marfan syndrome

Familial Hypercholesterolemia

Recessive Diseases

  • Requires two mutant alleles to show the phenotype or disease state.
  • Recall that a proband with a recessive disease usually has parents who are both carriers.
    • However, there are exceptions: uniparental disomy, skewed lyonization.


  • Recessive disorders usually result from a missing component of a pathway.
    • Phenotype usually results from the accumulation of a precursor / metabolite.

Homocysteinuria

Cystic Fibrosis

Hemochromatosis

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