Article by Russian scientists in Nature Genetics
"Genetic gold" in 37 minutes
Russian scientists have published an article in Nature Genetics about the search for genes,
mutations that lead to cancer, heart attack, diabetes and other dangerous diseasesNikolay Podorvanyuk, "Newspaper.
For the first time in nine years, the journal Nature Genetics published an article (Svishcheva et al., Rapid variation components–based method for whole-genome association analysis – VM), in which most of the authors, including the lead, are representatives of Russian scientific institutions.
Special project "Newspapers.Ru" "Russia Writes", dedicated to the publications of Russian scientists in the world's leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, has been in existence for the third year. This is enough time to make some rather sad observations. So, there are not too many publications in these journals in which there are authors with Russian affiliation. For the most part, Russian scientists who have publications in serious scientific journals are either co-executors and their names are found in the middle of the list of co-authors, or they have more than one affiliation, deservedly indicating in the first places the foreign institution in which the research was conducted.
A pleasant exception in this series is a publication published on Monday night Moscow time in the journal Nature Genetics. In this article, four out of five authors, including the lead author, are employees of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2011, the impact factor of the journal Nature Genetics was 35.5, which is the highest value for journals devoted to genetics and heredity. Over the past nine years, since 2003, this is the only article in Nature Genetics in which most of the authors, including the head of the work, are representatives of Russian scientific institutes.
Read more about the study "Newspaper.Ru" said one of the authors of the work, Doctor of Biological Sciences Yuri Aulchenko, an employee of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS.
– What is the main result of this work?
– In short, the work is methodological. That is, we have come up with a tool that helps to search for genes whose mutations can lead to diseases. By analogy, we came up with, say, a dredge for the extraction of "genetic gold" (a dredge is a complex mechanized mining and processing unit operating on the principle of a multi–bucket chain excavator mounted on a floating platform, used to develop placers, extract valuable minerals from them, most often gold, silver, and laying slag in dump. - "Newspaper.Ru»). To be more precise, we have improved a certain node of an existing dredge, which allows us to process a cubic meter of rock much faster and get a greater yield from a cubic meter. And faster not by percentages, but by an order of magnitude.
For any method other than ours, the analysis of data obtained by analyzing complete genomes from, say, ten thousand people is practically powerless. It takes endless counting time. Our method copes with this task in 37 minutes.
In other words, the work is devoted to the actual methodological problem of human genetics – the development of a new computationally efficient method of genome-wide analysis of genetic associations. The method of genome-wide analysis of genetic associations is widely used to identify regions of the genome, the variation of which is involved in the control of complex signs and common diseases. The Grammar-Gamma method developed at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS makes it possible to conduct such studies more efficiently from a statistical and computational point of view.
– What are the prospects for this study? The announcement of the SB RAS press service says about the discovery of a new method for searching for genetic markers of socially significant diseases - myocardial infarction, certain types of oncology, diabetes, glaucoma and a number of others. Does this mean that this work is a step towards the prevention and treatment of these diseases?
– Yes, indirectly – means. Again, the method we have developed is an improved dredge node. It is still necessary to have a breed (that is, data) and other nodes.
– How, where and for how long was this study conducted?
– The idea of the work appeared a long time ago, somewhere in 2007. By 2010, our Novosibirsk team was ready to try to implement this idea. It took several years of work of the team, in which everyone played a big role. Gulya Svishcheva, the first author, made mathematical calculations and conducted a theoretical study. Nadia Belonogova tested the method on real data. Our Dutch colleague Cornelia van Duijn provided data to verify the effectiveness of the method. Tatiana Iosifovna Aksenovich and I came up with all this and coordinated the work.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru17.09.2012