Have you ever wondered why one child suffers from asthma, while a sibling does not? Or how does someone get Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes? Or why one child learns best by reading books and the other learns best by watching videos and more “active” learning? Unlike some diseases such as sickle cell disease or hemophilia where one gene mutation almost always results in the disease, those mentioned above are very “complex” traits which can be affected by a myriad of genetic differences, outside environmental influences, and even a combination whereby the environment actually can change genetic expression.
Since 2013, researchers at LA Biomed/Harbor-UCLA have been breaking new ground in looking at genetic variation amongst individuals to examine the genetic contribution to a variety of these complex traits (http://labiomed.org/news/renowned-medical-genetics-pioneer-to-join-la-biomed-faculty-jerome-i-rotter-md-brings-a-team). Dr. Jerome Rotter and his team, as part of the Genomics Institute at LA Biomed/Harbor-UCLA, have been publishing extensively since then as evidenced by the huge number of publications indexed in Pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=rotter+j%5Bau%5D+ucla).
On Tuesday August 30th at 12 PM, in the 1st Floor CDCRC conference room, the inaugural lecture for the Genomic Institute took place. Dr. Kruglyak from UCLA, spoke on his own basic research into the mechanisms that regulate the expression (and non-expression) of these complex traits. Dr. Kruglyak has won numerous awards (http://www.biolchem.ucla.edu/people/faculty/leonid-kruglyak) and his talk should be very enlightening. Please join us for the next Genomic Institute lecture taking place next month.