Rare and low-frequency coding variants in CXCR2 and other genes are associated with hematological traits.

Hematological traits are important clinical parameters. To test the effects of rare and low-frequency coding variants on hematological traits, we analyzed hemoglobin concentration, hematocrit levels, white blood cell (WBC) counts and platelet counts in 31,340 individuals genotyped on an exome array. We identified several missense variants in CXCR2 associated with reduced WBC count (gene-based P = 2.

Differential methylation of genes and repeats in land plants.

The hypomethylated fraction of plant genomes is usually enriched in genes and can be selectively cloned using methylation filtration (MF). Therefore, MF has been used as a gene enrichment technology in sorghum and maize, where gene enrichment was proportional to genome size. Here we apply MF to a broad variety of plant species spanning a wide range of genome sizes.

Sequence, annotation, and analysis of synteny between rice chromosome 3 and diverged grass species.

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) chromosome 3 is evolutionarily conserved across the cultivated cereals and shares large blocks of synteny with maize and sorghum, which diverged from rice more than 50 million years ago. To begin to completely understand this chromosome, we sequenced, finished, and annotated 36.

Sequencing the maize genome.

Sequencing of complex genomes can be accomplished by enriching shotgun libraries for genes. In maize, gene-enrichment by copy-number normalization (high C(0)t) and methylation filtration (MF) have been used to generate up to two-fold coverage of the gene-space with less than 1 million sequencing reads. Simulations using sequenced bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones predict that 5x coverage of gene-rich regions, accompanied by less than 1x coverage of subclones from BAC contigs, will generate high-quality mapped sequence that meets the needs of geneticists while accommodating unusually high levels of structural polymorphism.

Maize genome sequencing by methylation filtration.

Gene enrichment strategies offer an alternative to sequencing large and repetitive genomes such as that of maize. We report the generation and analysis of nearly 100,000 undermethylated (or methylation filtration) maize sequences. Comparison with the rice genome reveals that methylation filtration results in a more comprehensive representation of maize genes than those that result from expressed sequence tags or transposon insertion sites sequences.