Genetics Flashcards
Multifactorial diseases recur in _ to _% of family members
2-7%
What quantifies the relative contribution of genetic susceptibility to the predisposition to disease in a population?
Heritability
List 4 human characteristics that show continuous normal distribution/polygenic inheritance?
Blood Pressure
Height
Intelligence
Head circumference
What model accounts for dichotomous multifactorial disorders?
Threshold model
______ is the sum of all of the factors which influence development of multifactorial disorder (genetic and environmental)
Liability
At what point in a normal distribution will a person express a dichotomous multifactorial disease?
Threshold of liability
“Relatives who share genes with X person will also have higher than average susceptibility depending on how many susceptibility genes they inherited”
What term describes this and what pattern of inheritance is X person likely to have?
Familial Clustering
Multifactorial Inheritance
What do adoption studies do?
Separate effects of genes and family environments
What is it called when two twins show a trait?
Concordance
This is higher in monozygotic twins than dizygotic twins, but still less than 100%
What kind of study compares the frequency of a variant in affected patients versus that of a carefully matched control group?
Association Study
What kind of inheritance does this describe:
“The disorder is familial but no distinctive pattern of inheritance”
Multifactorial
What kind of inheritance does this describe:
“The recurrence risk is greatest among close relatives of the index case”
Multifactorial
What kind of inheritance does this describe:
“Risk of recurrence is higher if more than one family member
is affected”
Multifactorial
What kind of inheritance does this describe:
“Risk of disease is conditioned by severity”
Multifactorial
What kind of inheritance does this describe:
“Recurrence risk changes between populations”
Multifactorial
What kind of inheritance does this describe:
“recurrence risk is higher if the proband is of the lesser affected sex”
Multifactorial
What is the respective risk for unilateral and bilateral cleft lip and palate?
2%, 6%
What condition is caused by narrowing of the pylorus between stomach and intestine leading to obstruction and vomiting?
Pyloric Stenosis
Pyloric stenosis is more common in one sex. Name the sex and how much more common it is?
5-times more common in baby boys.
In Complement Factor H (CDH), a certain polymorphism confers a >5-fold increased risk to developing X disease.
Name the polymorphism and name X disease.
Y402H.
Age related Macular Degeneration.
Name 4 examples of multifactorial disorders with congenital malformations.
Cleft lip and palate
Neural tube defects
Pyloric Stenosis
Congenital Heart Disease
Name 4 examples of common adult diseases that are multifactorial disorders.
Diabetes Epilepsy Hypertension Schizophrenia Manic depression
What do anterior neuropore defects give rise to?
Anencephaly
Encephalocele
In neural tube defects, what do defects lower down in lumbar region cause?
Spina bifida
What is the recurrence risk of neural tube defects if you have one affected child?
4%
What is the recurrence risk of neural tube defects if you have two affected children?
10%
Name 3 groups that slight excess of neural tube defects are observed in.
- Females
- First Born
- Babies conceived in late winter
What is the major environmental factor implicated in neural tube defects?
Maternal folic acid levels which acts via pathway of homocysteine metabolism
Supplementation of diet with folic acid (4mg/day) prior to conception has reduced recurrence risk from _% to _% in families that have NTD?
from 4% to 1%
What common polymorphism is found in methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene (involved in neural tube defects)?
C677T
This allele is present in 30% of Irish population.
What percentage of Alzheimers Disease cases is inherited?
<5%
Name two cognitive Alzheimers disease symptoms
Memory Loss
Disorientation
Name four behaviour Alzheimers disease symptoms
Anxiety
Delusions
Depression
Insomnia
The APO ε4 polymorphism is associated with:
Increased cholesterol and susceptibility to heart disease.
Side note: This allele also increases risk for AD in a dose-dependent manner. This is the predisposing allele.
The APO ε2 polymorphism is associated with:
Decreased cholesterol
Side note: This is the protective allele.
Young asymptomatic person with APO ε4/ε4 has __% lifetime risk of developing AD:
30%
Name 3 types of clinical sequencing
- Multigene (panel) sequencing
- Whole exome sequencing
- Whole genome sequencing
Name 3 types of cytogenetic tests
- Array Comparative Genomic Hybridisation (aCGH)
- G-banding (‘Karyotyping’)
- Fluorescence in situ Hybridisation (FISH)
What is constitutional cytogenetic analysis used for?
- Inherited and de novo chromosomal abberations
- Known chromosomal syndromes e.g. Down syndrome
- Prenatal diagnosis
What is oncology cytogenetic analysis used for?
- Acquired events
- Chromosome aberrations present only in the cancer cell
When would a constitutional cytogenetic analysis be indicated?
- Newborns displaying dysmorphic features
- Infants and children displaying development delay e.g. mental disability
- Miscarriages
- For prenatal analysis where increase risk of chromosome abnormality
What does neoplasm refer to?
An abnormal mass of tissue that forms when cells grow and divide more than they should or do not die when they should. Neoplasms may be benign (not cancer) or malignant (cancer).
Use of cytogenetics in neoplastic disorders?
Diagnosis and prognosis of cancers
Name 4 sample types suitable for cytogenetic analysis
- Blood
- Chorionic villi
- Bone marrow
- Solid tumours
- Solid tissue e.g. skin
What is the main test for postnatal indications requiring a chromosome analysis?
Array CGH
What are the clinical indications for microarray (aCGH)?
- Clinically significant abnormal growth -short stature, excessive growth, microcephaly, macrocephaly
- Abnormal clinical phenotype or dysmorphism
- Multiple congenital abnormalities
- Mental retardation or developmental delay
- Suspected deletion/ microdeletion/duplication syndrome
- X-linked recessive disorder in a female.
Microarray is ___ based
DNA based
Karyotype/FISH is ____ based
Cell based
What are the clinical indications for Karyotype/FISH analysis?
- Trisomy
- Numerical sex chromosome abnormality
- Ambiguous genitalia
- Family history of chromosome abnormality
- Mosaicism
What is the resolution of G-banding?
3-10Mb
What can aCGH not detect?
- Balanced rearrangements
- Low level mosaicism
- Polyploidy (triploidy can be detected on a SNP array)
- Uniparental disomy (can be detected on a SNP array)
What do meiotic nonallelic homologous recombination events between low-copy repeats (also known as segmental duplications) cause?
Microdeletion/duplication syndromes
Name the best known microdeletion syndrome.
DiGeorge syndrome (22q11.2)
What is the gold standard diagnostic test for DiGeorge syndrome?
Microarray
Why microarray rather than FISH for the detection of microdeletions?
In the event of no deletion the rest of the genome can be investigated
Name 3 types of FISH probes
- Paint
- Centromeric
- Locus specific (LSI)