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Genetics Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by

Genetics examination preparation

This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.

Historical views of heredity and inheri­tance

Bricks and mortar theory by Hippoc­rates
- Elements are originated from all parts of the body and became concen­trated in male semen. This will be developed and formed into human in the womb
- Inheri­tance is an acquired charac­ter­istics
Blueprint theory by Aristotle
- Transm­ission of inform­ation from parents to offspring
- Heredity is partly assymetric
- Transm­ission is partic­ulate (defin­itely one trait or another)
Lamarckian Inheri­tance
- To explain while some features persisted while others disappeared
- Traits acquired/ lost when depends on need

Modern genetics introduced by Darwin and Mendel

Darwin's blending inheri­tance
- Offspring inherit the parents' average characteristic
- All parts of the parents can contribute to the evolution and develo­pment of the offspring (Pange­nesis)
Mendel's partic­ulate inheri­tance
1. Law of segregation
2. Law of indepe­ndent assortment
3. Law of dominance
Exception to indepe­ndent assortment - Linked genes
Genes can be linked together if it is located close together on the same chromosome

Redisc­overy of Mendel's work

Allele
One of two or more versions of DNA sequence at a given genomic location

Conflict between Mendelian and Biomet­rician

Debates between Mendelian and Biomet­rician
- Do the hereditary and evolut­ionary properties for a trait like height were the same as those for Mendel's peas?
- Whether inheri­tance of complex trait was by 'blending' of parental phenotypes (Darwin) which was seen as different to the inheri­tance of discrete characters as in Mendel's peas
Biuome­tri­cian's claim
Traits are continuous (Blending inheri­tance) and heritable
Mendel­ian's claim
Mendelian genetics work in inheri­tance
Achond­rop­lasia
<90cm height
Marfan Syndrome
>200cm height

Emergence of Biomet­rical genetics

Whar are Galton's claims in trait heredi­tary?
1. Traits like height, weight, arm length are normally distri­buted, not binary
2. Traits are resemble between parents and offspring
Galton's claim(1): Traits are "­nor­mally distri­but­ed" means
1. A trait has a mean value given a population
2. A trait can be subject to mathem­atical transf­orm­ation
What Galton use to study continuous variation in organism?
- Regression
- Correl­ation
Galton's claim(2): Traits are resemble between parents and offspring
- When measuring the height of parents and offspring, the mid-pa­rental height has almost no deviation to their offspring height
- Therefore, traits are resemble between parents and offspring
Brownlee's Multi-Gene model to explain Mendelian inheri­tance in the blending inheri­tance model
1. Parents and Child: 0.5 correl­ation because parents transmit 50% of their genome to their child
2. Parents and Grandc­hild: 0.25 correlation
3. Parents and Great-­gra­ndc­hild: 0.125 correlation
- These correl­ations are based on Mendel­ian's segreg­ation law

Polygenic Model

Fisher`s Infini­tesimal model
- Polygenic inheri­tance :A quanti­tative trait could be explained by Mendelian inheri­tance if several genes affect the trait
- Include additive and dominant factors
- Resemb­lance between relatives occur due to their genetic covariance
Fisher's single locus model
Assume:
1. Dominant allele is not known
2. A locus either follows dominant or additive
- Used to determine whether the locus follow dominant or additive
Fisher's single locus model, assume A2A2= -a and A1A1= a
1. If d>0 : A1 is dominant to A2
2. If d<0 A2 is dominant to A1
3. If d=a/-a: Complete dominance (Heterozygote)
4. If d=a/-a: Over-dominance
5. If d=0: Locus is additive
Continuous distri­bution of quanti­tative traits
Alleles in our genome is limited but enviro­nmental factors are not. Therefore, traits are also influenced by enviro­nmental factors
Fisher's partit­ioning variance
Genetic and non-ge­netic factors
Three genetic factors (G)
1. Additive (A)
2. Dominance
3. Epistasis: Intera­ction between additive factors/ additive - dominant factors
Non-ge­netic factor
Enviro­nment (E)
Phenotypic variance (P)
Intera­ction between genetic and enviro­nmental factors (GxE)
2. P= G+E+GxE
Herita­bility
How much of the variation in a trait is due to variation in genetic factors (G)
Genetic Archit­ecture
- Compos­ition of various genetic factors upon a phenotype
- Include additive, dominance and epiptasis
Genetics
To identify genetic factor associated with traits­/di­sease but also study the contri­bution of a genetic factors
Trait is not dichotomy (contrast between two things)
The features of an organisms are due to the indivi­dual's genotype and enviro­nment

Allele

Allele and Allele freque­ncies
- Proportion of chromo­somes in population carrying the allele of traits/disease
- Different combin­ation of alleles determine traits or diseases
- Allele freque­ncies indicate the proportion of observed genotypes in a given population
Allele transm­ission to next generation
- Same with Mendel's first law
- Totally indepe­ndent and not influenced by enviro­nmental factors

Hardy-­Wei­nberg Equili­brium

Do segreg­ation in Mendelian inheri­tance law affected by the segregant (allele)?
No. This is called "­sta­ble­"
Hardy-­Wei­nberg principle
- Assumed that allele freque­ncies will not change from generation to generation
- p2+2pq+q2=1
- p+q=1
Assump­tions of Hardy-­Wei­nberg equili­brium
1. Random mating
2. No natural selection
3. Equal genotype freque­ncies in two sexes
4. No mutation/migration
5. No differ­ential viability
6. Infinite population size
However, all of these are not realistic!
Mendelian segreg­ation
Preserved in any organism with sexual reprod­uction regardless of allele frequency in the population

Chi-Square Test

Chi square
Use statistics to determine whether a locus of interest is under HWE or not
Null hypothesis
There is no difference between observed value and the expected value
Degree of freedom (DF)
- Number of phenotypic possib­ilities in the cross
- Example DF: 3(AA,Aa,aa)-1=2
- If the level of signif­icance read from the table is greater than 0.05/5%, the null hypothesis is not rejected
When the null hypothesis is supported by analysis
Assumptions
1. Mating is random
2. Normal gene segregation
3. Indepe­ndent assortment
When the null hypothesis is not supported by analysis
Assumptions
1. Non-random occur
2. Genes are not randomly segreg­ating because they are linked on the same chromo­som­e/i­nhe­rited together.
 

Introd­uction of Herita­bility

Model to describe herita­bility
1. Fisher's model
2. Falconer's model
Falconer's Model
Mathem­atical formula used in twin studies to estimate the relative contri­bution of genetics vs enviro­nment to variation in a particular trait
- Herita­bility of the trait based on the difference between twin correlations
- Heritability=2(rMZ-rMD)
- Where r=conc­ordance of the phenotype, MZ=Mon­ozy­gotic Twins, DZ= Dizygotic twins

Herita­bility

Phenotypic similarity in family depends on
1. Genetic relationship
2. Traits
Total phenotypic variance for a character?
- VP=VG+VE
- Combined effects of genotypic and enviro­nmental variance
Genetic variance (VG)
- The variance among the mean phenotypes of different genotypes
-Additive genetic varian­ce(VA): Variation due to the additive effects of alleles
- Dominance genetic variation (VD): Variation due to dominance relati­onships among alleles
- Epistatic genetic variation (VI): Variation due to intera­ctions among loci
Enviro­nmental variance (VE)
The variance among phenotypes expressed by replicate members of the same genotype
- Differ­ences between monozy­gotic twins are due to enviro­nmental factors
Dominance genetic variance (VD)
Due to dominance deviations which describe the extent to which hetero­zygotes are not exactly interm­ediate between the homozy­gotes
Additive genetic variance (VA)
- Respon­sible for the resemb­lance between parents and offspring
- The basis for the response to selection
Degree of relate­dness and the components of phenotypic covariance
1. Identical twins: VA+VD+VE
2. Parent-offspring:1/2VA
3. Full siblings:1/2VA+1/4VD+VE
4. Grandp­are­nt-­Gra­ndc­hil­d:1/4VA
Herita­bility of a trait
- A measure of the degree resemb­lance between relatives
- Estimates the degree of variation in a phenotypic trait in a population that is due to genetic variation between indivi­duals in that population that is due to genetic variation between indivi­duals in that population
Narrow sense herita­bility (h2)
The proportion of trait variance that is due to additive genetic factors
Broad sense herita­bility (H2)
The proportion of trait variance that is due to all genetic factors including VD, VA, VI

Normal Distri­bution

Two quantities that describe a normal distri­bution
1. Mean
2. Variance
Deviation
- Distri­bution of a trait in a popula­tion= Proportion of indivi­duals that have each of the possible phenotypes
- In normal distri­bution, half points are above and half points are below mean
- One standard deviation are located in the mean
- The distri­bution of a trait in a population implies nothing about its inheri­tance
Covariance
A measure of the joint variab­ility of two random variables (trait)
- Example: Measure the height deviation of father and son in a population
Resemb­lance between family members
- When there is genetic variation for a character, there will be a resemb­lance between relatives
- Relatives will have more similar trait values to each other compared to unrelated indivi­duals
Resemb­lance between relatives
-Depends on the degree of relationship
- Use slope, not correl­ation coeffi­cients to compute resemb­lance of family members
- Identical twin=100%, Full siblin­gs=50%, Parent­-of­fsp­rin­g=50%, Half-s­ibl­ing=25%

Morgan Experiment

Morgan's experiment
Proved that chromo­somes are the location of Mendel's heritable factors from his fly experiment
Centim­organ
The frequency of crossing over
Linkage Map/ Genetic Map
If the frequency of how often genes crossover is known, the percentage can be used to estimate how far apart the genes are from one another on a chromosome

Genes

Definition of gene
- A core unit of the heredity that control the develo­pment of a trait
- Mendel's "­dis­crete partic­le" in partic­ulate inheri­tance actually indicated the concept of "gene"
- Those consist of DNA sequences and produces functional elements
How many genes can make protein in human?
20,000 genes make proteins and most of them involve in determ­ining traits
Genotype
The part of the genetic makeup of a cell which determine one of its charac­ter­istics
Phenotype
The set of observable charac­ter­istics of an individual resulting from the intera­ction of its genotype with the enviro­nment
Components in a gene
Gene contain exons, introns, UTRs and promoter in its transcript
- Gene can have various transc­ripts due to altern­ative splicing
Exon
A region of a trascribed gene present in the final functional RNA molecule
Intron
Any nucleotide sequence within a gene that is removed by RNA splicing during maturation of the final RNA product
UTR
Either of two sections, one on each side of a coding sequence on a strand of mRNA
Promoter
The section of DNA that controls the initiation of RNA transc­ription as a product of a gene

Cells and Chromo­somes

Where does genetic recomb­ination occur in meiosis?
In meiosis I and it occur between Prophase I and Metaphase I
Pros of asexual reprod­uction
- Produce more offspring as it takes less time
- Require less energy
Cons of asexual reprod­uction
- No variation in offspring
- Less variation in population
- Mutation can slightly increase variations
- Fragile to enviro­nmental change
Pros of sexual reprod­uction
- Increase variation in offspring
- More resistant to many enviro­nmental forces because of genetic variation
Cons of sexual reprod­uction
- Require two organisms for mating
- Requires more cellular energy
-More time required for offspring develo­pment

Elements in Chromo­somes

Ploidy
Number of homologous sets of chromo­somes in a cell
Locus
A fixed position on a chromosome that may be occupied by one or more gene
The nuclear genome
Consist of 6 billion nucleo­tides in 46 chromo­somes

Chromo­somes

Hereditary factors
Genes and allele that are located on chromo­somes
Autosomal chromo­somes/ autosomes
Pairs number 1 to 22
Sex chromo­somes/ somatic cells
Pair number 23
Mitoch­ondrial chromo­somes in mitoch­ondria
- Haploid
- Maternal transm­ission
Karyotype
- Visualize chromosome shapes, structures and behaviors of chromo­somes during cell division
- Autosomes in metaphase are arranged from the longest to shortest and from number 1 to 22
- Chromo­somes number 23 are either XX/XY
- p arm=short, q arm= not p
 

Mutation

Saltat­ionists
Claim that evolution take place suddenly (salta­ting)( so that change instan­taneous transition into a new species
Gradua­lists
Believe gradual process of evolution given large-­scale variab­ility in a population
Gene can be defined in terms of their behavior as fundam­ental units based on:
1. Hereditary Transmission
2. Genetic recomb­ination 3. Mutation
4. Gene function
Darwinian view on mutation
- Most mutations have an impact on certain traits
- Natural selection is the primary force of evolution
Post-M­end­elian geneti­cists' view on mutation
Natural selection plays little or modest role but occurrence of mutation would be a major evolution force
"­Hopeful Monste­r" hypothesis by Richard Goldsc­hmidt
- Macroe­vol­ution through macromutations
- Called "­Hopeful Monste­rs" because they were the embodiment of large phenotypic changes that had the potential to succeed as new species (saltation)
- Change early develo­pment and thus cause large effects in the adult phenotype
Develo­pmental macrom­uta­tions
Mutations in develo­pme­ntally important genes could produce large phenotypic effects
Neo-Da­rwinism
- Natural selection is assumed to play much more important role than mutation
- Creating new characters in the presence of genetic recomb­ination
Kimura's view: Neutral mutation
- The rate of substi­tution is so high that if each mutation improved fitness, the gap between the most fit and typical genotype would be large
- This rapid rate of mutation means that the majority of the mutations were neutral
- Mutations had little/ no effect on the fitness of the organism
- Not all mutations affect on/ completely determine our trait, including diseases
Mutation is an old term
Describe the situation for permanent change in evolut­ionary process
Variant
- The change in the nucleotide sequences
- Since a change in nucleotide sequence may not be permanent, variants are often called: genetic variant, variation or genetic variation
Polymo­rphism
Describe a variant with a frequency above 1% but broadly variants that we know the frequency in certain population

Mutation

Saltat­ionists
Claim that evolution take place suddenly (salta­ting)( so that change instan­taneous transition into a new species
Gradua­lists
Believe gradual process of evolution given large-­scale variab­ility in a population

Mutation and Population

Out of Africa Theory
- Explains the origin of modern human beings
- A small subset of this population migrated out in the past 100,000 years and rapidly expanded throughout a broad geogra­phical region
Non-Af­racan popula­tions have different variant frequency due to
1. Bottleneck
2. Long migration history
Coalescent Theory
- Two sample lineages find common ancestor
- A model how an allele sampled from a population may have originated from a common ancestor
Stochastic
When coales­cence occurs is a stochastic (random probab­ility( process

Genomic study of population structure

Implic­ations of HapMap project and 1000 Genome Project
- Variant frequency is uniquely repres­ented in each population so can identify the population structure
- Genomic data are useful and fundam­ental resource to identify genes associated with disease and genetic variant in patients

Genomic study of population structure

Implic­ations of HapMap project and 1000 Genome Project
- Variant frequency is uniquely repres­ented in each population so can identify the population structure
- Genomic data are useful and fundam­ental resource to identify genes associated with disease and genetic variant in patients

Genetic variant by size

SNV - Single Nucleotide Variant
- Substi­tution of one/an­other base pair at a particular location in the genome
- Also called SNP if the allele frequency in a population is known
- A point mutation because it only affects a single nucleotide of nucleic acid
- There are 3,500,000 SNVs per individual (more in African)
- Everyone have different compos­itions of SNVs so there us variab­ility in traits
- The ratio of hetero­zygous and homozygous SNVs is
2:1
Indel - Insert­ion­/De­letion
- 1-1000bp changes in our genome
- There are ~300,000 to 600,000, indels per individual (more in African)
- Less than SNVs as indels have a large phenotypic effect than SNVs so more selective pressure
Indels can be divided to
1. Micros­ate­llite polymorphism
2. Mobile element insertion polymo­rphism
Micros­ate­llite polymo­rphism
2-4 nucleotide unit repeated in tandem 5-24 times
Mobile element insertion polymo­rphism
Cause human genetic diversity through retrotransposition
- Involves transc­ription into RNA
- Reverse transc­ription into DNA sequence
- Insertion into another site in genome
SV - Structural variant
- A genomic change >1000bp
SV can be divided to
1. Copy Number Variant (CNV) - Deletion/Duplication
2. Copy Number Neutral Variants (CNNV) - Invers­ion­/In­ser­tion/ Transl­ocation
Small variants
SNVs and indels
Large variants
SVs
SV in the gnomAD project
- Represent population structure as small variants
- More singleton SVs are observed in larger SVs
- Singleton: The variant only seen in an individual (rare)
Rare: It's under strong natural selection so only seen in few individuals
- Size of SVs are correlated with the effect size of SVs

Genetic variant by size

SNV - Single Nucleotide Variant
- Substi­tution of one/an­other base pair at a particular location in the genome
- Also called SNP if the allele frequency in a population is known
- A point mutation because it only affects a single nucleotide of nucleic acid
- There are 3,500,000 SNVs per individual (more in African)
- Everyone have different compos­itions of SNVs so there us variab­ility in traits
- The ratio of hetero­zygous and homozygous SNVs is
2:1
Indel - Insert­ion­/De­letion
- 1-1000bp changes in our genome
- There are ~300,000 to 600,000, indels per individual (more in African)
- Less than SNVs as indels have a large phenotypic effect than SNVs so more selective pressure

Genetic variant by Frequency

Selection and Frequency
- Natural selection work on trait so the frequency of variants that contribute to trait can be changed
- Level of natural selection is varied by traits and diseases
- Some traits are favored by selection, therefore, the frequency variants increase
- According to Polygenic model, a single variant is lilkely contri­buting partia­lly­/highly partially to a trait. Therefore, there is a wide range of the frequency of variants
Selection and Allele Frequency
- Allele freque­ncies can be changed by selection - Increase beneficial alleles and removes delete­rious one
- Traits not favored over mating are likely under natural selection (high selective pressure)
- Natural selection tends to make allele with higher fitness more common over time, resulting in Darwinian evolution
Fecundity
- Based on fertility ratio (FR)
- Lower fecundity: Higher selective pressure on the trait
- If a trait is not suited to mating­/.r­epr­odu­ction, allele for this trait disapp­eared in a population
- Similar to reprod­uctive fitness
FR
Calculated based on the number of children indivi­duals in that group had compared with the general population
- If a disease have 0.5 FR, they have average half as many children as the general population
Penetrance
The proportion of indivi­duals carrying a particular variant of a gene that also express an associated trait
Fitness
- Determine the allele frequency in population
- If fitness is not affected by variant, it will be remained in a popula­tion, ultimately increasing its frequency

Genetic variant by Transm­ission

Type of genetic variants by transm­ission mode
1. Inherited variants
2. De novo variants
3. Somatic variants
De novo variants
- new variants arise during cell division
- different nucleotide changes compared to DNA template
- Errors are not present in genome thus called de novo=new
- Errors in somatic cell: de novo somatic variants
- Errors in germ cells: de novo germline variants
Mutabi­lit­y/M­utation rates
How much errors are occured during replic­ation
Mutation signatures
The pattern of somatic mutations in disease
Human germline mutation rate
1.0~1.5x 10-8 bp per generation
How many total of de novo variant from mother and father ?
- ~70 de novo variants
- 80% of de novo variants are from father's sperm
Main contri­butor to de novo variants
- Advanced parental age
- Father is higher than mother- Because sperma­tog­onial cells continue to divide throughout life which allow the progre­ssive accumu­lation of mutations due to errors during DNA replic­ati­on/­failure to repair non-re­pli­cative DNA damage between cell divisions
Rarest variants
Have greatest potential to carry for disorders
Variant frequency and its penetrance for disease
- Inverse relationship
- Allele frequency is low but penetrance is high

Genetic variant by conseq­uence

Missense variants
Single base pairs substi­tution produce different amino acid
Trucating variants
A genetic variant which results in a shorter version of the protein being produced
Nonsense mediated decay
Destroys the mRNA leading to no protein
Noncoding variants
- Variants located outside the coding regions
- Located in promoters, transc­ription factor binding sites, enchancers
Protein isoform
Protein that are similar to each other and perform similar roles within the cells
Variant annotation
- The process of assigning functional inform­ation to DNA variants
- Can be varied by transcript
- A gene can have more than one transcript
Two schemes for variant annotation
1. Per gene annota­tion: Choose the most critical conseq­uence by the variant per gene
2. Per-tr­ans­cript annota­tion: All conseq­uence for every transcript

Linkage Disequ­ili­brium and Haplotype

Linkage disequ­ili­brium (LD)
- Non-random associ­ation of alleles at two or more loci in a given population
- LD between two alleles is related to time of the mutation events, genetic distance and population history
- LD around an ancestral mutation on founder chromosome
Haplotype
A group of alleles in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent