The first Malay database toward the ethnic-specific target molecular variation

BACKGROUND:The Malaysian Node of the Human Variome Project (MyHVP) is one of the eighteen official Human Variome Project (HVP) country-specific nodes. Since its inception in 9(th) October 2010, MyHVP has attracted the significant number of Malaysian clinicians and researchers to participate and contribute their data to this project. MyHVP also act as the center of coordination for genotypic and phenotypic variation studies of the Malaysian population. A specialized database was developed to store and manage the data based on genetic variations which also associated with health and disease of Malaysian ethnic groups. This ethnic-specific database is called the Malaysian Node of the Human Variome Project database (MyHVPDb). FINDINGS:Currently, MyHVPDb provides only information about the genetic variations and mutations found in the Malays. In the near future, it will expand for the other Malaysian ethnics as well. The data sets are specified based on diseases or genetic mutation types which have three main subcategories: Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP), Copy Number Variation (CNV) followed by the mutations which code for the common diseases among Malaysians. MyHVPDb has been open to the local researchers, academicians and students through the registration at the portal of MyHVP ( http://hvpmalaysia.kk.usm.my/mhgvc/index.php?id=register ). CONCLUSIONS:This database would be useful for clinicians and researchers who are interested in doing a study on genomics population and genetic diseases in order to obtain up-to-date and accurate information regarding the population-specific variations and also useful for those in countries with similar ethnic background

Modeling Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Streamflow Using Projections of the 5th Assessment Report for the Bernam River Basin, Malaysia

Potential impacts of climate change on the streamflow of the Bernam River Basin in Malaysia are assessed using ten Global Climate Models (GCMs) under three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5). A graphical user interface was developed that integrates all of the common procedures of assessing climate change impacts, to generate high resolution climate variables (e.g., rainfall, temperature, etc.) at the local scale from large-scale climate models. These are linked in one executable module to generate future climate sequences that can be used as inputs to various models, including hydrological and crop models. The generated outputs were used as inputs to the SWAT hydrological model to simulate the hydrological processes. The evaluation results indicated that the model performed well for the watershed with a monthly R2, Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) and Percent Bias (PBIAS) values of 0.67, 0.62 and −9.4 and 0.62, 0.61 and −4.2 for the calibration and validation periods, respectively. The multi-model projections show an increase in future temperature (tmax and tmin) in all respective scenarios, up to an average of 2.5 °C for under the worst-case scenario (RC8.5). Rainfall is also predicted to change with clear variations between the dry and wet season. Streamflow projections also followed rainfall pattern to a great extent with a distinct change between the dry and wet season possibly due to the increase in evapotranspiration in the watershed. In principle, the interface can be customized for the application to other watersheds by incorporating GCMs’ baseline data and their corresponding future data for those particular stations in the new watershed. Methodological limitations of the study are also discussed