Jawdat,R.S.; Parson,W.; Lane,N.; Sengupta,S.;

Eur J Hum Genet 2016 24:e64

Scharinger,B.; Messner,B.; Turkcan,A.; Schuster,D.; Vuorinen,A.; Pitterl,F.; Heinz,K.; Arnhard,K.; Laufer,G.; Grimm,M.; Stuppner,H.; Oberacher,H.; Eller,P.; Ritsch,A.; Bernhard,D.; The health benefit through the control of lipid levels in hyperlipidaemic individuals is evident from a large number of studies. The pharmacological options to achieve this goal shall be as specific and personalized as the reasons for and co-factors of hyperlipidaemia. It was the goal of this study to reveal the impact of leoligin on cholesterol levels and to define its mechanism of action. [Read More]

Gandini,F.; Achilli,A.; Pala,M.; Bodner,M.; Brandini,S.; Huber,G.; Egyed,B.; Ferretti,L.; Gomez-Carballa,A.; Salas,A.; Scozzari,R.; Cruciani,F.; Coppa,A.; Parson,W.; Semino,O.; Soares,P.; Torroni,A.; Richards,M.B.; Olivieri,A.; Rare mitochondrial lineages with relict distributions can sometimes be disproportionately informative about deep events in human prehistory. We have studied one such lineage, haplogroup R0a, which uniquely is most frequent in Arabia and the Horn of Africa, but is distributed much more widely, from Europe to India. We conclude that: (1) the lineage ancestral to R0a is more ancient than previously thought, with a relict distribution across the Mediterranean/Southwest Asia; (2) R0a has a much deeper presence in Arabia than previously thought, highlighting the role of at least one Pleistocene glacial refugium, perhaps on the Red Sea plains; (3) the main episode of dispersal into Eastern Africa, at least concerning maternal lineages, was at the end of the Late Glacial, due to major expansions from one or more refugia in Arabia; (4) there was likely a minor Late Glacial/early postglacial dispersal from Arabia through the Levant and into Europe, possibly alongside other lineages from a Levantine refugium; and (5) the presence of R0a in Southwest Arabia in the Holocene at the nexus of a trading network that developed after similar to 3 ka between Africa and the Indian Ocean led to some gene flow even further afield, into Iran, Pakistan and India. [Read More]

Parson,W.; Ballard,D.; Budowle,B.; Butler,J.M.; Gettings,K.B.; Gill,P.; Gusmao,L.; Hares,D.R.; Irwin,J.A.; King,J.L.; Knijff,Pd; Morling,N.; Prinz,M.; Schneider,P.M.; Neste,C.V.; Willuweit,S.; Phillips,C.; The DNA Commission of the International Society for Forensic Genetics (ISFG) is reviewing factors that need to be considered ahead of the adoption by the forensic community of short tandem repeat (STR) genotyping by massively parallel sequencing (MPS) technologies. MPS produces sequence data that provide a precise description of the repeat allele structure of a STR marker and variants that may reside in the flanking areas of the repeat region. [Read More]

Serin,A.; Canan,H.; Alper,B.; Gulmen,M.K.; Zimmermann,B.; Parson,W.; Despite its large geographic and population size only little is known about the mitochondrial (mt)DNA make up of Turkey orensically relevant data are almost completely absent in the literature. We analyzed the mtDNA control region of 224 volunteers from South Eastern Turkey and compared the data to populations from neighboring countries. The haplotypes will be made available via the EMPOP database (EMP00670) and contribute to the body of forensic mtDNA data. [Read More]