The prevalent genetic alterations were SNVs (32 non-synonymous coding point mutations), whereas a handful were gene copy number gains.
Because mutations are rare events, most MA studies observe only a handful of mutations (Lynch 2010a; Ness et al. 2012; Sung, Ackerman, et al. 2012; Keightley et al. 2014), making it difficult to understand more complicated mutational patterns.
Current attempts to study empirical fitness landscapes by systematically analysing mutants carrying all possible combinations of sets of interesting mutations [ 9] are therefore necessarily restricted to sets of a handful of mutations.
The majority of Seipin mutations cause C-terminal truncations, along with a handful of point mutations.
Dr. Fouchier declined to confirm or deny that, and would say only that it took "a handful" of mutations.
Dennis Drayna, a geneticist at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders in Rockville, Maryland, who participated in the session, described how he and his colleagues used 44 Pakistani families to pinpoint a handful of mutations responsible for the disease.
However, these papers showed how just a handful of mutations could make it infectious in aerosol form to ferrets - animals which are the best mimic for how it might affect humans.
The paper, from a laboratory led by virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, describes how a handful of mutations might give the H5N1 avian influenza virus, which typically infects birds, the potential to move easily between mammals and touch off a human flu pandemic.
Only a handful of mutations have been identified in both A-T families and breast cancer cohorts.
Categorized by pathological conditions, many rare yet well-characterized genetic disorders are associated with a handful of mutations [ 3, 5].
