scholarly journals HKG: An open genetic variant database of 205 Hong Kong Cantonese exomes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Ou ◽  
Henry Chi-Ming Leung ◽  
Amy Wing-Sze Leung ◽  
Ho-Ming Luk ◽  
Bin Yan ◽  
...  

HKG is the first fully accessible variant database for Hong Kong Cantonese, constructed from 205 novel whole-exome sequencing data. There has long been a research gap in the understanding of the genetic architecture of southern Chinese subgroups, including Hong Kong Cantonese. HKG detected 196,325 high-quality variants with 5.93% being novel, and 25,472 variants were found to be unique in HKG compared to other Chinese populations (CHN). PCA illustrates the uniqueness of HKG in CHN, and IBD analysis revealed that it is related mostly to southern Chinese with a similar effective population size. An admixture study estimated the ancestral composition of HKG and CHN, with a gradient change from north to south, consistent with their geological distribution. ClinVar, CIViC and PharmGKB annotated 599 clinically significant variants and 360 putative loss-of-function variants, substantiating our understanding of population characteristics for future medical development. Among the novel variants, 96.57% were singleton and 6.85% were of high impact. With a good representation of Hong Kong Cantonese, we demonstrated better variant imputation using reference with the addition of HKG data, thus successfully filling the data gap in southern Chinese to facilitate the regional and global development of population genetics.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhikun Wu ◽  
Zehang Jiang ◽  
Tong Li ◽  
Chuanbo Xie ◽  
Liansheng Zhao ◽  
...  

AbstractA complete characterization of genetic variation is a fundamental goal of human genome research. Long-read sequencing has improved the sensitivity of structural variant discovery. Here, we conduct the long-read sequencing-based structural variant analysis for 405 unrelated Chinese individuals, with 68 phenotypic and clinical measurements. We discover a landscape of 132,312 nonredundant structural variants, of which 45.2% are novel. The identified structural variants are of high-quality, with an estimated false discovery rate of 3.2%. The concatenated length of all the structural variants is approximately 13.2% of the human reference genome. We annotate 1,929 loss-of-function structural variants affecting the coding sequence of 1,681 genes. We discover rare deletions in HBA1/HBA2/HBB associated with anemia. Furthermore, we identify structural variants related to immunity which differentiate the northern and southern Chinese populations. Our study describes the landscape of structural variants in the Chinese population and their contribution to phenotypes and disease.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Meng Wu ◽  
Ming Li ◽  
Hong-Ju Xie ◽  
Hong-Wei Liu

Silicone implant-based augmentation rhinoplasty or mammoplasty induces capsular contracture, which has been acknowledged as a process that develops an abnormal fibrotic capsule associated with the immune response to allogeneic materials. However, the signaling pathways leading to the nasal fibrosis remain poorly investigated. We aimed to explore the molecular mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of nasal capsular contracture, with a specific research interest in the signaling pathways involved in fibrotic development at the advanced stage of contracture. By examining our recently obtained RNA sequencing data and global gene expression profiling between grade II and grade IV nasal capsular tissues, we found that both the RAP1 and JAK/STAT signaling pathways were hyperactive in the contracted capsules. This was verified on quantitative real-time PCR which demonstrated upregulation of most of the representative component signatures in these pathways. Loss-of-function assays through siRNA-mediated Rap1 silencing and/or small molecule-directed inhibition of JAK/STAT pathway in ex vivo primary nasal fibroblasts caused a series of dramatic behavioral and functional changes, including decreased cell viability, increased apoptosis, reduced secretion of proinflammatory cytokines, and synthesis of type I collagen, compared to control cells, and indicating the essential role of the RAP1 and JAK/STAT signaling pathways in nasal capsular fibrosis. Our results sheds light on targeting downstream signaling pathways for the prevention and therapy of silicone implant-induced nasal capsular contracture.


Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 258
Author(s):  
Karim Karimi ◽  
Duy Ngoc Do ◽  
Mehdi Sargolzaei ◽  
Younes Miar

Characterizing the genetic structure and population history can facilitate the development of genomic breeding strategies for the American mink. In this study, we used the whole genome sequences of 100 mink from the Canadian Centre for Fur Animal Research (CCFAR) at the Dalhousie Faculty of Agriculture (Truro, NS, Canada) and Millbank Fur Farm (Rockwood, ON, Canada) to investigate their population structure, genetic diversity and linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) indicated that the variation among color-types was significant (p < 0.001) and accounted for 18% of the total variation. The admixture analysis revealed that assuming three ancestral populations (K = 3) provided the lowest cross-validation error (0.49). The effective population size (Ne) at five generations ago was estimated to be 99 and 50 for CCFAR and Millbank Fur Farm, respectively. The LD patterns revealed that the average r2 reduced to <0.2 at genomic distances of >20 kb and >100 kb in CCFAR and Millbank Fur Farm suggesting that the density of 120,000 and 24,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) would provide the adequate accuracy of genomic evaluation in these populations, respectively. These results indicated that accounting for admixture is critical for designing the SNP panels for genotype-phenotype association studies of American mink.


1991 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Zee

The style of speech illustrated is that typical of the educated younger generation in Hong Kong. The recording is that of a 22-year-old female university student who has lived all her life in Hong Kong.


Linguistics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. S. Li ◽  
Cathy S. P. Wong ◽  
Wai Mun Leung ◽  
Sam T. S. Wong

AbstractDrawing on Clyne’s (


2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (9) ◽  
pp. 658-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qingming Dong ◽  
Bingying Xu ◽  
Yi Tan ◽  
Zheng Liu ◽  
Linwei Tian ◽  
...  

Circulation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (Suppl_3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimin Yang

Background and Hypothesis: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is an incurable vascular disease for which chemotherapies are being considered for therapeutic development. There is no method reported to date for effective computational screening of these drugs for this disease. Big data analyses that leverage the molecular parallels between cancer and PH may define novel pathogenic mechanisms and facilitate repurposing of chemotherapies for PAH. More specifically, while functional deficiency of the iron-sulfur (Fe-S) biogenesis gene ISCU and oxidative metabolism in human pulmonary arterial endothelial cells (PAECs) is known to drive PAH, the pathogenic regulation of ISCU is not fully defined, and no tailored drugs have been identified to bolster ISCU activity. Methods and Results: We applied a computational algorithm EDDY (Evaluating Differential DependencY), which analyzes RNA sequencing data from 810 cancer cell lines exposed to 368 small molecules, in order to identify chemotherapeutics that depended upon rewired PH-related gene clusters. The top ranked drug was a piperlongumine (PL) analog (BRD2889) that was predicted to extensively rewire dependencies across PH gene clusters, mediated by ISCU. In vitro, coupling gain- and loss-of-function analyses of GSTP1 with BRD2889 exposure in PAECs, we found that BRD2889 inhibits glutathione S-transferase P1 (GSTP1), an enzyme which in turn catalyzes ISCU glutathionylation and increases its stability in hypoxia. Consequently, BRD2889 and GSTP1 knockdown phenocopy one another by increasing Fe-S-dependent Complex I activity and mitochondrial oxygen consumption while ameliorating pathogenic apoptosis. Consistent with these computational and in vitro results, in a mouse model of PAH (IL-6 transgenic mice in hypoxia), BRD2889 improved hemodynamic and molecular disease manifestations in vivo. Conclusions: Using a novel computational platform, we identified a coordinated connection between BRD342289 and GSTP1-ISCU axis, crucial to PAEC metabolism. This study offers insight to fundamental PH pathobiology and sets the stage for accelerated repurposing of chemotherapies such as BRD342289 in PH.


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