Prenatal exposures and exposomics of asthma

This review examines the causal investigation of preclinical development of childhood asthma using exposomic tools. We examine the current state of knowledge regarding early-life exposure to non-biogenic indoor air pollution and the developmental modulation of the immune system. We examine how metabolomics technologies could aid not only in the biomarker identification of a particular asthma phenotype, but also the mechanisms underlying the immunopathologic process. Within such a framework, we propose alternate components of exposomic investigation of asthma in which, the exposome represents a reiterative investigative process of targeted biomarker identification, validation through computational systems biology and physical sampling of environmental medi

Genome of Pesxtera Muierii skull shows high diversity and low mutational load in pre-glacial Europe

Few complete human genomes from the European Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) have been sequenced. Using novel sampling and DNA extraction approaches, we sequenced the genome of a woman from "Pesxtera Muierii,"Romania who lived similar to 34,000 years ago to 13.5x coverage. The genome shows similarities to modern-day Europeans, but she is not a direct ancestor. Although her cranium exhibits both modern human and Neanderthal features, the genome shows similar levels of Neanderthal admixture (similar to 3.1%) to most EUP humans but only half compared to the similar to 40,000-year-old Pesxtera Oase 1. All EUP European hunter-gatherers display high genetic diversity, demonstrating that the severe loss of diversity occurred during and after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) rather than just during the out-of-Africa migration. The prevalence of genetic diseases is expected to increase with low diversity; however, pathogenic variant load was relatively constant from EUP to modern times, despite post-LGM hunter-gatherers having the lowest diversity ever observed among Europeans

The mitogenome of a 35,000-year-old Homo sapiens from Europe supports a Palaeolithic back-migration to Africa

After the dispersal of modern humans (Homo sapiens) Out of Africa, hominins with a similar morphology to that of present-day humans initiated the gradual demographic expansion into Eurasia. The mitogenome (33-fold coverage) of the Peştera Muierii 1 individual (PM1) from Romania (35 ky cal BP) we present in this article corresponds fully to Homo sapiens, whilst exhibiting a mosaic of morphological features related to both modern humans and Neandertals. We have identified the PM1 mitogenome as a basal haplogroup U6*, not previously found in any ancient or present-day humans. The derived U6 haplotypes are predominantly found in present-day North-Western African populations. Concomitantly, those found in Europe have been attributed to recent gene-flow from North Africa. The presence of the basal haplogroup U6* in South East Europe (Romania) at 35 ky BP confirms a Eurasian origin of the U6 mitochondrial lineage. Consequently, we propose that the PM1 lineage is an offshoot to South East Europe that can be traced to the Early Upper Paleolithic back migration from Western Asia to North Africa, during which the U6 lineage diversified, until the emergence of the present-day U6 African lineages