Publicaties

Although all cells in a human body are descendant from a single cell –i.e. the zygote– the genetic content in the different cells is not necessarily identical due to the accumulation of mutations during development and aging, making every individual a genetic mosaic. Such mutations may lead to the development of disease, like cancer or developmental disorders. Hence, it is important to study the spectrum of mutations that accumulate in a human ...

Through bacterial cloning, a non-specific product co-amplified in a previous whole mitochondrial genome study of Canis lupus familiaris was identified as part of a Numt on chromosome 29 of the dog. Even though further analysis confirmed the fidelity of the mitochondrial genome sequencing results, it still highlighted the risk of Numt contamination. A computer-based search of the dog's nuclear genome for segments homologous to the mtDNA sequence ...

Background: The first generation of genome sequence assemblies and annotations have had a significant impact upon our understanding of the biology of the sequenced species, the phylogenetic relationships among species, the study of populations within and across species, and have informed the biology of humans. As only a few Metazoan genomes are approaching finished quality (human, mouse, fly and worm), there is room for improvement of most ...

Background: The Argane tree (Argania spinosa L. Skeels) is an endemic tree of southwestern Morocco that plays an important socioeconomic and ecologic role for a dense human population in an arid zone. Several studies confirmed the importance of this species as a food and feed source and as a resource for both pharmaceutical and cosmetic compounds. Unfortunately, the argane tree ecosystem is facing significant threats from environmental changes ...

BACKGROUND:
With the recent development of CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)/Cas9 genome editing technology, the possibility to genetically manipulate the human germline (gametes and embryos) has become a distinct technical possibility. Although many technical challenges still need to be overcome in order to achieve adequate efficiency and precision of the technology in human embryos, the path leading to ...

Whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS) have become increasingly available in the research and clinical settings and are now also being offered by direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing (GT) companies. This offer can be perceived as amplifying the already identified concerns regarding adequacy of informed consent (IC) for both WES/WGS and the DTC GT context. We performed a qualitative content analysis of Websites of four ...

The identification of gastrointestinal helminth infections of humans and livestock almost exclusively relies on the detection of eggs or larvae in faeces, followed by manual counting and morphological char-acterisation to differentiate species using microscopy-based techniques. However, molecular approaches based on the detection and quantification of parasite DNA are becoming more prevalent, increasing the sensitivity, specificity and ...

Visceral leishmaniasis is a potentially fatal disease endemic to large parts of Asia and Africa, primarily caused by the protozoan parasite Leishmania donovani. Here, we report a high-quality reference genome sequence for a strain of L. donovani from Nepal, and use this sequence to study variation in a set of 16 related clinical lines, isolated from visceral leishmaniasis patients from the same region, which also differ in their response to in ...

Germline genome editing is often disapproved of at the international policy level because of its possible threats to human dignity. However, from a critical perspective the relationship between this emerging technology and human dignity is relatively understudied. We explore the main principles that are referred to when 'human dignity' is invoked in this context; namely, the link with eugenics, the idea of a common genetic heritage, the ...

The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is a highly successful invasive species that transmits a number of human viral diseases, including dengue and Chikungunya fevers. This species has a large genome with significant population-based size variation. The complete genome sequence was determined for the Foshan strain, an established laboratory colony derived from wild mosquitoes from southeastern China, a region within the historical range of ...