3 research outputs found

    Food security in a changing climate world

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    Food security in a changing climate world

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    The purpose of this article is to analyze the potential impact of climate change on food security. Global environmental changes coupled with socio-economic changes are a major food security issue and challenge. The main findings show that all four key elements of food security, namely availability, stability, use and access are significantly affected by changes in the environment. The most vulnerable segment of the population is those whose living conditions and livelihoods are strictly dependent on climate change and their ability to adapt is the lowest due to household income. This category includes children and women, poor people, the elderly and all those who depend on agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing and other natural resources. Climate change and its impact on demographic patterns, urbanization, population movements, and changes in food consumption patterns are intensifying food system risks globally

    Characterization of greater middle eastern genetic variation for enhanced disease gene discovery

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    The Greater Middle East (GME) has been a central hub of human migration and population admixture. The tradition of consanguinity, variably practiced in the Persian Gulf region, North Africa, and Central Asia1-3, has resulted in an elevated burden of recessive disease4. Here we generated a whole-exome GME variome from 1,111 unrelated subjects. We detected substantial diversity and admixture in continental and subregional populations, corresponding to several ancient founder populations with little evidence of bottlenecks. Measured consanguinity rates were an order of magnitude above those in other sampled populations, and the GME population exhibited an increased burden of runs of homozygosity (ROHs) but showed no evidence for reduced burden of deleterious variation due to classically theorized ‘genetic purging’. Applying this database to unsolved recessive conditions in the GME population reduced the number of potential disease-causing variants by four- to sevenfold. These results show variegated genetic architecture in GME populations and support future human genetic discoveries in Mendelian and population genetics
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