Apr
29
Twin Study Deepens Multiple Sclerosis Mystery
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The most detailed genetic investigation ever of multiple sclerosis has produced more questions than answers.
Using extremely fine-grained analytical tools, scientists compared genetic information in three sets of identical twins. One of each pair had MS, and the other didn’t — yet their genes proved essentially identical.
“We find no smoking gun on the genetic level,” said National Center for Genome Resources geneticist Stephen Kingsmore, co-author of the study published April 28 in Nature.
The research cost $1.5 million, and the scientists took 18 months to sequence 2.8 billion DNA units in each twin, and determine whether they came from the mother or father. Most genomic comparisons look for differences in a just handful of suspect genes, and even whole-genome approaches don’t differentiate between parental contributions.
The researchers also analyzed the twins’ CD4 cells, a type of white blood cell that plays a central role in the development of MS. In these cells, the researchers sequenced epigenomes — chemical instructions that turn genes on and off — and transcriptomes, or a chemical record of genes that are actively coding proteins.
These multiple layers of information represent the cutting edge of genomic analysis, and are expected to reveal what rougher tools cannot. “This was a technical tour de force, and potentially represents a new way of looking at disease states,” said Kingsmore. Nevertheless, they found no differences.
read the rest via Twin Study Deepens Multiple Sclerosis Mystery | Wired Science | Wired.com.