On the origins of Mendelian disease genes in man: the impact of gene duplication

Over 3,000 human diseases are known to be linked to heritable genetic variation, mapping to over 1,700 unique genes. Dating of the evolutionary age of these disease-associated genes has suggested that they have a tendency to be ancient, specifically coming into existence with early metazoa. The approach taken by past studies, however, assumes that the age of a disease is the same as the age of its common ancestor, ignoring the fundamental contribution of duplication events in the evolution of new genes and function. Here, we date both the common ancestor and the duplication history of known human disease-associated genes. We find that the majority of disease genes (80%) are genes that have been duplicated in their evolutionary history. Periods for which there are more disease-associated genes, for example, at the origins of bony vertebrates, are explained by the emergence of more genes at that time, and the majority of these are duplicates inferred to have arisen by whole-genome duplication. These relationships are similar for different disease types and the disease-associated gene's cellular function. This indicates that the emergence of duplication-associated diseases has been ongoing and approximately constant (relative to the retention of duplicate genes) throughout the evolution of life. This continued until approximately 390 Ma from which time relatively fewer novel genes came into existence on the human lineage, let alone disease genes. For single-copy genes associated with disease, we find that the numbers of disease genes decreases with recency. For the majority of duplicates, the disease-associated mutation is associated with just one of the duplicate copies. A universal explanation for heritable disease is, thus, that it is merely a by-product of the evolutionary process; the evolution of new genes (de novo or by duplication) results in the potential for new diseases to emerge

How Should Congress Respond to McDonnell?

Discussion of question of whether McDonnell was essentially right or wrong. Should Congress act to change the McDonnell rule? Should the Supreme Court reconsider it? What would be an alternative or a better way, if there is one, to approach the question of public corruption prosecution

The Canada Business Corporations Act: Some Aspects of Transnational Interest

With passage into law on March 24, 1975, of the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) it is probably safe to say by way of provocative introduction that Canada has enacted the most modern corporation law in the English-speaking world. The Act is to be proclaimed in force at the end of December, 1975. Although the predecessor statute, the Canada Corporations Act, will remain in force, no new corporations may be incorporated under it

Biomarker-based prediction of progression in MCI: Comparison of AD signature and hippocampal volume with spinal fluid amyloid-β and tau

Objective: New diagnostic criteria for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to Alzheimer's disease (AD) have been developed using biomarkers aiming to establish whether the clinical syndrome is likely due to underlying AD. We investigated the utility of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers in predicting progression from amnesic MCI to dementia, testing the hypotheses that (1) markers of amyloid and neurodegeneration provide distinct and complementary prognostic information over different time intervals, and that (2) evidence of neurodegeneration in amyloid-negative MCI individuals would be useful prognostically. Methods: Data were obtained from the ADNI-1 (Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative Phase 1) database on all individuals with a baseline diagnosis of MCI, baseline MRI and CSF data, and at least one follow-up visit. MRI data were processed using a published set of a priori regions of interest to derive a measure known as the ``AD signature,'' as well as hippocampal volume. The CSF biomarkers amyloid-β, total tau, and phospho tau were also examined. We performed logistic regression analyses to identify the best baseline biomarker predictors of progression to dementia over 1 or 3 years, and Cox regression models to test the utility of these markers for predicting time-to-dementia. Results: For prediction of dementia in MCI, the AD signature cortical thickness biomarker performed better than hippocampal volume. Although CSF tau measures were better than CSF amyloid-β at predicting dementia within 1 year, the AD signature was better than all CSF measures at prediction over this relatively short-term interval. CSF amyloid-β was superior to tau and AD signature at predicting dementia over 3 years. When CSF amyloid-β was dichotomized using previously published cutoff values and treated as a categorical variable, a multivariate stepwise Cox regression model indicated that both the AD signature MRI marker and the categorical CSF amyloid-β marker were useful in predicting time-to-event diagnosis of AD dementia. Conclusion: In amnesic MCI, short-term (1 year) prognosis of progression to dementia relates strongly to baseline markers of neurodegeneration, with the AD signature MRI biomarker of cortical thickness performing the best among MRI and CSF markers studied here. Longer-term (3 year) prognosis in these individuals was better predicted by a marker indicative of brain amyloid. Prediction of time-to-event in a survival model was predicted by the combination of these biomarkers. These results provide further support for emerging models of the temporal relationship of pathophysiologic events in AD and demonstrate the utility of these biomarkers at the prodromal stage of the illness

An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Ballot Truncation on Ranked-Choice Electoral Outcomes

In ranked-choice elections voters cast preference ballots which provide a voter's ranking of the candidates. The method of ranked-choice voting (RCV) chooses a winner by using voter preferences to simulate a series of runoff elections. Some jurisdictions which use RCV limit the number of candidates that voters can rank on the ballot, imposing what we term a truncation level, which is the number of candidates that voters are allowed to rank. Given fixed voter preferences, the winner of the election can change if we impose different truncation levels. We use a database of 1171 real-world ranked-choice elections to empirically analyze the potential effects of imposing different truncation levels in ranked-choice elections. Our general finding is that if the truncation level is at least three then restricting the number of candidates which can be ranked on the ballot rarely affects the election winner