Dr. Sabeti’s interest in Lassa was piqued seven years ago, before there was an Ebola epidemic, and before sequencing reached today’s low price and fast speed. She had decided to look at already-determined DNA sequences from people around the world with a simple question: Are there new gene mutations, ones that only recently emerged in a population, that might protect against disease? The idea was that if a disease entered a population and was deadly, those who carried a protective mutation would survive and reproduce and soon that good mutation would become common. She saw one such mutation in Nigeria — it was a slight tweak in a gene and so common that 34 percent of the population there has it. The gene, called LARGE, is 10 to 50 times bigger than other genes. The gene still functioned, but why did so many people have this variation? Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story It turned out that the role of the LARGE gene was well known, studied by Dr. Michael B.A. Oldstone at Scripps and his colleagues. LARGE modifies a protein on the surface of cells that the virus uses as an entryway. Without LARGE, that group found, Lassa cannot get into cells.nytimes/2014/12/02/science/factory-direct-virus-analysis.html?_r=0
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 17:08:28 +0000