Jews are more likely to carry mutations for Tay-Sachs, Africans for sickle cell anemia.
Though iPS cells hold great promise, they carry mutations and other abnormalities that might rule them out for medical therapies.
Women who carry mutations in genes called BRCA are already known to have a substantially higher risk of breast cancer, at around 65%.
But he noted that many groups carry mutations, and the ones who know about them are a step ahead, because genetic tests have become a major tool for cancer prevention and early detection.
A recent study looking at centenarians in the Ashkenazi Jewish population of New England found an intriguing genetic link: they were more likely than the general population to carry mutations that reduced the activity of IGF-1.
Families with highly penetrant retinoblastomas often carry mutations that result in early stop codons.
Interestingly, 20% of all human cancers carry mutations in subunits of the Swi/Snf complex.
We found branched variants carry mutations in two related transcription factors that were selected independently.
Because cancer cells generally carry mutations in proapoptotic factors or overexpression of antiapoptotic factors, they are usually resistant to apoptosis.
Instead, patients appear to carry mutations in one out of dozens, even hundreds of risk genes.
I'd long known that Ashkenazi Jews are more likely to carry mutations in those genes.
