Single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the public domain: how useful are they?

There is a concerted effort by a number of public and private groups to identify a large set of human single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). As of March 2001, 2.84 million SNPs have been deposited in the public database, dbSNP, at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SNP/). The 2.84 million SNPs can be grouped into 1.65 million non-redundant SNPs. As part of the International SNP Map Working Group, we recently published a high-density SNP map of the human genome consisting of 1.42 million SNPs (ref. 3). In addition, numerous SNPs are maintained in proprietary databases. Our survey of more than 1,200 SNPs indicates that more than 80% of TSC and Washington University candidate SNPs are polymorphic and that approximately 50% of the candidate SNPs from these two sources are common SNPs (with minor allele frequency of > or =20%) in any given population.     

Effect of a magnesium-deficient diet on the striatal content of amines in the dog

Résumé Une diète déficiente en magnésium administrée à de jeunes chiennes pendant 35 jours est suffisante pour produire une diminution significative de la concentration en dopamine du noyau caudé, mais non des autres amines mesurées. Cliniquement les animaux étaient hypokinétiques, mais ne tremblaient pas. Cette approche expérimentale pourrait s'avérer utile dans l'étude de la pathophysiologie de l'hypokinésie.     

On phosphorylation in brain tissue in the chick

Zusammenfassung Der Austausch von P³² zwischen anorganischem Phosphat und ATP war grösser in der Leber als im Gehirn des Hühnchens. Dieser Unterschied in den zwei Geweben ist jedoch nach dem Ausbrüten des Embryos grösser.     

Concentrations of organic acids in animal tissues

Résumé Les auteurs ont réuni en 2 tableaux les données de la littérature sur le degré de concentration des acides organiques dans les tissus animaux.

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Supported in part by a research grant from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, U. S. Public Health Service.     

Genome-wide association study identifies 12 new susceptibility loci for primary biliary cirrhosis

In addition to the HLA locus, six genetic risk factors for primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) have been identified in recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS). To identify additional loci, we carried out a GWAS using 1,840 cases from the UK PBC Consortium and 5,163 UK population controls as part of the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 3 (WTCCC3). We followed up 28 loci in an additional UK cohort of 620 PBC cases and 2,514 population controls. We identified 12 new susceptibility loci (at a genome-wide significance level of P < 5 × 10??) and replicated all previously associated loci. We identified three further new loci in a meta-analysis of data from our study and previously published GWAS results. New candidate genes include STAT4, DENND1B, CD80, IL7R, CXCR5, TNFRSF1A, CLEC16A and NFKB1. This study has considerably expanded our knowledge of the genetic architecture of PBC.     

Forecast combining with neural networks

This paper investigates the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to combine time series forecasts of stock market volatility from the USA, Canada, Japan and the UK. We demonstrate that combining with nonlinear ANNs generally produces forecasts which, on the basis of out-of-sample forecast encompassing tests and mean squared error comparisons, routinely dominate forecasts from traditional linear combining procedures. Superiority of the ANN arises because of its flexibility to account for potentially complex nonlinear relationships not easily captured by traditional linear models.