Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.
(Archbishop Desmond Tutu)If we have access to the genome sequence of an individual there are a very large number of questions to be posed regarding that genome. For instance, what genetic markers are present that are of a predictive value in medical terms? What trait and disease alleles are present? What genetic properties are present that make the individual sensitive or resistant to a certain drug treatment? We may also want to know about the relationship of the individual to other individuals and whether there are markers characteristic of a certain human population. These are all questions that may be addressed using bioinformatics tools. In the previous chapter we examined SNPs and used them to get an idea about the genetic differences between individuals in general. Here, we will again use SNP data to analyse genomes, but we will see how we may identify SNPs that are shared between a group of individuals. We will also illustrate how SNP data may be mapped to information regarding exons, thus identifying SNPs that are likely to be in coding regions. In this way we are able to learn about the consequences of different SNPs at the level of protein products. The genomes that we are to examine are those of a few South African individuals. These genomes also highlight interesting questions regarding the early history of man.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.