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Use of next generation sequencing for isolated and syndromic Anophthalmia, Microphthalmia and Coloboma (MAC): a new approach to molecular genetic diagnosis
Full text linkABSTRACT: Use of Next Generation Sequencing for isolated and syndromic Anophthalmia, Microphthalmia and Coloboma (MAC): a new approach to molecular genetic diagnosis
Department in Cellular Biotechnologies and Hematology
PhD in Human Biology and Medical Genetics
Supervisor: Prof. Pizzuti Antonio
Correlator: Prof. Novelli Antonio
Phd student: Dott. Iapichino Giuseppe
In these last few years, both mendelian and complex diseases have reached a higher level of accuracy in the analytical process, with a more efficient diagnostic definition and also a more detailed genotype-phenotype correlation. Complex syndromic pathologies, such as microphthalmia and anophthalmia, often accompanied by complex clinical pictures, and characterized by a high level of genetic and phenotypic heterogeneity, can now be handled in a faster and thorough manner. Currently, national or international shared guidelines have yet to be defined and a phenotypic or genetic classification of these diseases is still missing. Similarly to what happens for most rare diseases, the diagnostic and care management of children with ocular syndromes suffers heavily from the absence of strong scientific knowledge that would help in the development of shared guidelines, mainly because the phenotypic heterogeneity of these diseases is massive. The aim of this project was to carefully investigate the genes involved in microphthalmia, anophthalmia, coloboma and related syndromic diseases using Next Generation Sequencing. This new molecular approach allows to make a massive sequencing of different genomic regions. The possibility to analyze millions of sequencing reactions in parallel at very reduced costs, with shorter processing times and very little amounts of initial DNA, has provided a formidable boost for the study of rare diseases. In the present study, a panel of different genes involved in the ocular development has been designed to simultaneously and rapidly analyze multiple ocular genes of a patient by using the Illumina-Nextseq 500 platform. NGS allowed us to analyze several genes for a given patient and to identify variants both in genes directly involved in the pathogenesis of anophthalmia, microphthalmia and coloboma, both in genes not directly implicated in syndromic or isolated MACs. This allowed us to understand at a molecular level many of those phenotypes described as shaded, atypical or not perfectly defined in a specific syndrome. In this regard, the continuous interaction with the referring physicians has been fundamental in our study, highlighting the importance of the collaboration between the lab scientist and the clinical geneticist that will eventually help to find a link between the phenotypes described and the many variants still to be identified
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Identificazione di mutazioni nel gene hMRE11 in pazienti ATLD con Atassia senza Telangectasia
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