Author Correction: Association study in African-admixed populations across the Americas recapitulates asthma risk loci in non-African populations.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Author Correction: Assembly of a pan-genome from deep sequencing of 910 humans of African descent.

In the version of this article initially published, the statement "there are no pan-genomes for any other animal or plant species" was incorrect. The statement has been corrected to "there are no reported pan-genomes for any other animal species, to our knowledge." We thank David Edwards for bringing this error to our attention.

Assembly of a pan-genome from deep sequencing of 910 humans of African descent.

We used a deeply sequenced dataset of 910 individuals, all of African descent, to construct a set of DNA sequences that is present in these individuals but missing from the reference human genome. We aligned 1.19 trillion reads from the 910 individuals to the reference genome (GRCh38), collected all reads that failed to align, and assembled these reads into contiguous sequences (contigs).

A continuum of admixture in the Western Hemisphere revealed by the African Diaspora genome.

The African Diaspora in the Western Hemisphere represents one of the largest forced migrations in history and had a profound impact on genetic diversity in modern populations. To date, the fine-scale population structure of descendants of the African Diaspora remains largely uncharacterized. Here we present genetic variation from deeply sequenced genomes of 642 individuals from North and South American, Caribbean and West African populations, substantially increasing the lexicon of human genomic variation and suggesting much variation remains to be discovered in African-admixed populations in the Americas.

Transferability of genome-wide associated loci for asthma in African Americans.

Objective: Transferability of significantly associated loci or GWAS "hits" adds credibility to genotype-disease associations and provides evidence for generalizability across different ancestral populations. We sought evidence of association of known asthma-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in an African American population.

Methods: Subjects comprised 661 participants (261 asthma cases and 400 controls) from the Howard University Family Study.

Analyzing the Association of Polymorphisms in the CRYBB2 Gene with Prostate Cancer Risk in African Americans.

Background/aim: Prostate cancer (PCa) shows disproportionately higher incidence and disease-associated mortality in African Americans. The human crystallin beta B2 (CRYBB2) gene has been reported as one tumor signature gene differentially expressed between African American and European American cancer patients. We investigated the role of CRYBB2 genetic variants in PCa in African Americans.

Association of ATP1B1, RGS5 and SELE polymorphisms with hypertension and blood pressure in African-Americans.

Objective: Although an increasing number of hypertension-associated genetic variants is being reported, replication of these findings in independent studies has been challenging. Several genes in a human chromosome 1q linkage region have been reported to be associated with hypertension. We examined polymorphisms in three of these genes (ATP1B1, RGS5 and SELE) in relation to hypertension and blood pressure in a cohort of African-Americans.

African and non-African admixture components in African Americans and an African Caribbean population.

Admixture is a potential source of confounding in genetic association studies, so it becomes important to detect and estimate admixture in a sample of unrelated individuals. Populations of African descent in the US and the Caribbean share similar historical backgrounds but the distributions of African admixture may differ. We selected 416 ancestry informative markers (AIMs) to estimate and compare admixture proportions using STRUCTURE in 906 unrelated African Americans (AAs) and 294 Barbadians (ACs) from a study of asthma.

Development of admixture mapping panels for African Americans from commercial high-density SNP arrays.

Background: Admixture mapping is a powerful approach for identifying genetic variants involved in human disease that exploits the unique genomic structure in recently admixed populations. To use existing published panels of ancestry-informative markers (AIMs) for admixture mapping, markers have to be genotyped de novo for each admixed study sample and samples representing the ancestral parental populations. The increased availability of dense marker data on commercial chips has made it feasible to develop panels wherein the markers need not be predetermined.

Association of body fat percentage and heart rate variability measures of sympathovagal balance.

Aims: We tested the hypothesis that body fat percentage determines cardiac sympathovagal balance in healthy subjects.

Main Methods: Heart rate variability (HRV) measurements were made of the standard deviation of the normal-normal RR intervals (SDNN) and the low frequency/high frequency (LF/HF) ratio, from time domain and fast Fourier transform spectral analysis of electrocardiogram RR intervals during trials of uncontrolled and controlled (paced) breathing at 0.2Hz.

Deletion mapping suggests that the 1p22 melanoma susceptibility gene is a tumor suppressor localized to a 9-Mb interval.

Loss of the short arm of chromosome 1 is frequently observed in many tumor types, including melanoma. We recently localized a third melanoma susceptibility locus to chromosome band 1p22. Critical recombinants in linked families localized the gene to a 15-Mb region between D1S430 and D1S2664.

Identification of six novel genes by experimental validation of GeneMachine predicted genes.

In silico gene identification from finished and unfinished human genome sequence has become critically important in many projects seeking to gain insights into the gene content of genomic regions implicated in diseases. To establish limitations and criteria for in silico gene identification, and to identify novel genes of potential relevance to human prostate cancer and melanoma, 3 Mb of chromosome 1 sequence have been analyzed using GeneMachine. This program is a software suite comprising of sequence similarity programs and four gene identification programs.