Improving the Understanding of Genetic Variants in Rare Disease With Large-scale Reference Populations

The goal of this protocol is to outline the design and performance of in vivo experiments in Drosophila melanogaster to assess the functional consequences of rare gene variants associated with human...

Many human diseases are associated with mutations or variations in genetic sequences. Some of these genetic variants are heritable, passed down from generation to generation, while others arise sporadically during an organism’s life and cause diseases such as cancer. Researchers are trying to identify and characterize these genetic alterations in the hopes of improving diagnosis and therapeutic options for patients.In this video, we will examine the history of genetic disease research,...

A population is composed of members of the same species that simultaneously live and interact in the same area. When individuals in a population breed, they pass down their genes to their offspring. Many of these genes are polymorphic, meaning that they occur in multiple variants. Such variations of a gene are referred to as alleles. The collective set of all the alleles within a population is known as the gene pool.

Here, we present a straightforward protocol for noninvasive genetic sampling of butterfly populations based on the field collection of residual egg debris. It can be used to confirm species identity and quantify genetic variation. This protocol can be easily adapted to broader groups for community science...

Amino acid-level signal-to-noise analysis determines the prevalence of genetic variation at a given amino acid position normalized to background genetic variation of a given population. This allows for identification of variant "hotspots" within a protein sequence (signal) that rises above the frequency of rare variants found in a population...

High resolution melting analysis (HRM) is a sensitive and rapid solution for genetic variant detection. It depends on sequence differences that result in heteroduplexes changing the shape of the melting curve. By combing HRM and agarose gel electrophoresis, different types of genetic variants such as indels can be...