Neurophysiology

Contains research objectives and reports on nine research projects.The Teagle Foundation, Inc.U.S. Air Force (Aeronautical Systems Division) under Contract AF33(616)-7783Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.National Institutes of Health [Grant M-4235-(C1)]National Institutes of Health (Grant B-1865-(C3))National Institutes of Health (Grant MP-4737)National Institutes of Health (Grant B-2480(C1)

Neurophysiology

Contains research objectives.Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.The Teagle Foundation, Inc.National Institutes of Health (Grant NB-01865-05)National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737-02)U.S. Air Force (Aeronautical Systems Division) under Contract AF33(616)-778

African-specific alleles modify risk for asthma at the 17q12-q21 locus in African Americans

BACKGROUND: Asthma is the most common chronic disease in children, occurring at higher frequencies and with more severe disease in children with African ancestry. METHODS: We tested for association with haplotypes at the most replicated and significant childhood-onset asthma locus at 17q12-q21 and asthma in European American and African American children. Following this, we used whole-genome sequencing data from 1060 African American and 100 European American individuals to identify novel variants on a high-risk African American-specific haplotype. We characterized these variants in silico using gene expression and ATAC-seq data from airway epithelial cells, functional annotations from ENCODE, and promoter capture (pc)Hi-C maps in airway epithelial cells. Candidate causal variants were then assessed for correlation with asthma-associated phenotypes in African American children and adults. RESULTS: Our studies revealed nine novel African-specific common variants, enriched on a high-risk asthma haplotype, which regulated the expression of GSDMA in airway epithelial cells and were associated with features of severe asthma. Using ENCODE annotations, ATAC-seq, and pcHi-C, we narrowed the associations to two candidate causal variants that are associated with features of T2 low severe asthma. CONCLUSIONS: Previously unknown genetic variation at the 17q12-21 childhood-onset asthma locus contributes to asthma severity in individuals with African ancestries. We suggest that many other population-specific variants that have not been discovered in GWAS contribute to the genetic risk for asthma and other common diseases

Argot and the Creation of Social Types in a Young Gay Community

This study investigates the existence of various social types in a young gay community (I 7-24 age group) located in the southeastern United States. The social types are identified “emically” through the use of a specific domain of knowledge, gay argot. Gay terms and expressions are grouped using a method similar to factor analysis to locate specific dimensions of behavior in this community. A central concern of this paper is to determine how the concept of “binary opposition” operates among the resulting social types. Binary opposition, which has been identified in studies constructing other folk taxonomies (classification schemes created from the participants\u27 perspective), means that for every entity created in the taxonomy there must be an opposite to that entity (an example would be the “butch-femme” distinction among lesbians). Next, through interviews we investigate the specific attributes that define each of the resulting social types. Finally, we employ componential analysis to determine if there is any logical scheme operating among the types