Research Capabilities of Golden Helix Software

         November 20, 2014

The Golden Helix team enjoys following our customers’ success.  And we would like to share some recent client work to demonstrate what is possible with our software, as well as to inspire researchers to continue questioning current scientific norms.

Cancer has been at the forefront of genetic and medical research, with many research efforts in prostate cancer. Dr. Rick Kittles recently published Population genetics analysis of prostate cancer GWAS SNPs to evaluate West African genetic ancestry as a risk factor, which compared SNPs to determine whether West African genetic ancestry is a risk factor for prostate cancer. Strong evidence points to environmental and sociocultural factors playing a role in the increased risk of prostate cancer. However, genetic factors were also indicated for this increased risk. Kittles and his team performed a principle components analysis using SNP and Variation Suite to further understand potential risk factors.

Dr. Vincenzo De Luca and his team at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health recently published their work: Investigation of the genetic interaction between BDNF and DRD3 genes in suicidal behavior in psychiatric disorders. De Luca and his team were interested in examining the role that the BDNF and DRD3 genes play in suicide. Four tag SNPs in BDNF and 15 SNPs in the D3 receptor of DRD3 were analyzed for possible linkage to suicide attempts from Schizophrenia patients with European ancestry. Due to the functional relationship between BDNF and DRD3, researchers performed an interaction analysis between BDNF and DRD3 polymorphisms using Golden Helix’s HelixTree.

Disordered gambling as a behavior addiction has been supported by neurobiological research. Dr. Daniela Lobo and her team at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health devised a rat gambling track to test whether individual animal performance was linked to associated risk gene expression. Allelic-based gene associations were compared using chi-squared test or logical regressions using SNP and Variation Suite. The results in Addiction-related genes in gambling disorders: new insights from parallel human and pre-clinical models substantiate past findings that report the connection of DRD3 receptor.

We hope you enjoyed learning about what some of our clients are working on. If we missed a recent article published by you or one of our other customers please let us know, we will be more than happy to include the publication in our repository.

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