Prostate cancer disparities in Black men of African descent: a comparative literature review of prostate cancer burden among Black men in the United States, Caribbean, United Kingdom, and West Africa

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>African American men have the highest prostate cancer morbidity and mortality rates than any other racial or ethnic group in the US. Although the overall incidence of and mortality from prostate cancer has been declining in White men since 1991, the decline in African American men lags behind White men. Of particular concern is the growing literature on the disproportionate burden of prostate cancer among other Black men of West African ancestry in the Caribbean Islands, United Kingdom and West Africa. This higher incidence of prostate cancer observed in populations of African descent may be attributed to the fact that these populations share ancestral genetic factors. To better understand the burden of prostate cancer among men of West African Ancestry, we conducted a review of the literature on prostate cancer incidence, prevalence, and mortality in the countries connected by the Transatlantic Slave Trade.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Several published studies indicate high prostate cancer burden in Nigeria and Ghana. There was no published literature for the countries Benin, Gambia and Senegal that met our review criteria. Prostate cancer morbidity and/or mortality data from the Caribbean Islands and the United Kingdom also provided comparable or worse prostate cancer burden to that of US Blacks.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The growing literature on the disproportionate burden of prostate cancer among other Black men of West African ancestry follows the path of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. To better understand and address the global prostate cancer disparities seen in Black men of West African ancestry, future studies should explore the genetic and environmental risk factors for prostate cancer among this group.</p

Changes in timber haul emissions in the context of shifting forest management and infrastructure

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although significant amounts of carbon may be stored in harvested wood products, the extraction of that carbon from the forest generally entails combustion of fossil fuels. The transport of timber from the forest to primary milling facilities may in particular create emissions that reduce the net sequestration value of product carbon storage. However, attempts to quantify the effects of transport on the net effects of forest management typically use relatively sparse survey data to determine transportation emission factors. We developed an approach for systematically determining transport emissions using: 1) -remotely sensed maps to estimate the spatial distribution of harvests, and 2) - industry data to determine landscape-level harvest volumes as well as the location and processing totals of individual mills. These data support spatial network analysis that can produce estimates of fossil carbon released in timber transport.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Transport-related emissions, evaluated as a fraction of transported wood carbon at 4 points in time on a landscape in western Montana (USA), rose from 0.5% in 1988 to 1.7% in 2004 as local mills closed and spatial patterns of harvest shifted due to decreased logging on federal lands.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The apparent sensitivity of transport emissions to harvest and infrastructure patterns suggests that timber haul is a dynamic component of forest carbon management that bears further study both across regions and over time. The monitoring approach used here, which draws only from widely available monitoring data, could readily be adapted to provide current and historical estimates of transport emissions in a consistent way across large areas.</p

An adaptive radiation model for the origin of new gene functions

The evolution of new gene functions is one of the keys to evolutionary innovation. Most novel functions result from gene duplication followed by divergence. However, the models hitherto proposed to account for this process are not fully satisfactory. The classic model of neofunctionalization holds that the two paralogous gene copies resulting from a duplication are functionally redundant, such that one of them can evolve under no functional constraints and occasionally acquire a new function. This model lacks a convincing mechanism for the new gene copies to increase in frequency in the population and survive the mutational load expected to accumulate under neutrality, before the acquisition of the rare beneficial mutations that would confer new functionality. The subfunctionalization model has been proposed as an alternative way to generate genes with altered functions. This model also assumes that new paralogous gene copies are functionally redundant and therefore neutral, but it predicts that relaxed selection will affect both gene copies such that some of the capabilities of the parent gene will disappear in one of the copies and be retained in the other. Thus, the functions originally present in a single gene will be partitioned between the two descendant copies. However, although this model can explain increases in gene number, it does not really address the main evolutionary question, which is the development of new biochemical capabilities. Recently, a new concept has been introduced into the gene evolution literature which is most likely to help solve this dilemma. The key point is to allow for a period of natural selection for the duplication per se, before new function evolves, rather than considering gene duplication to be neutral as in the previous models. Here, I suggest a new model that draws on the advantage of postulating selection for gene duplication, and proposes that bursts of adaptive gene amplification in response to specific selection pressures provide the raw material for the evolution of new function