Blood Ties: Chimerism Can Mask Twin Discordance in High-Throughput Sequencing

• Published in: Twin research and human genetics Vol. 14; no. 2; pp. 137 - 143
• Main Author: Erlich, Yaniv
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.04.2011
• Subjects: Blood; Child; Chimerism; Discordance; Disease susceptibility; Diseases in twins; Diseases in Twins - genetics; Diseases in Twins - pathology; DNA - blood; Embryogenesis; Environmental factors; Female; Genetic aspects; Genetic Predisposition to Disease; Genome, Human; Genotype; Genotypes; Hematopoietic stem cells; high throughput sequencing; Human genetics; Humans; Multiple sclerosis; Multiple Sclerosis - genetics; Multiple Sclerosis - pathology; Next-generation sequencing; Nucleotide sequence; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide - genetics; Risk Factors; Sequence Analysis, DNA; shared circulation; Single-nucleotide polymorphism; Statistical methods; Twin studies; Twins; Twins, Dizygotic - genetics; Twins, Monozygotic - genetics; Variation; shared circulation; chimerism; high throughput sequencing

Twin studies have long provided a means to separate the contributions of genetic and environmental factors. A recent pioneering report by Baranzini et al. presented an analysis of the complete genomes and epigenomes of a monozygotic (MZ) twin pair discordant for multiple sclerosis. This failed to fi...