Publications by authors named "R Swofford"
Mammalian genomes contain millions of regulatory elements that control the complex patterns of gene expression. Previously, The ENCODE consortium mapped biochemical signals across many cell types and tissues and integrated these data to develop a Registry of 0.9 million human and 300 thousand mouse candidate cis-Regulatory Elements (cCREs) annotated with potential functions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile liquid biopsy has potential to transform cancer diagnostics through minimally-invasive detection and monitoring of tumors, the impact of preanalytical factors such as the timing and anatomical location of blood draw is not well understood. To address this gap, we leveraged pet dogs with spontaneous cancer as a model system, as their compressed disease timeline facilitates rapid diagnostic benchmarking. Key liquid biopsy metrics from dogs were consistent with existing reports from human patients.
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- The study investigates the genetic and brain features linked to vocal learning in mammals by comparing data from the Egyptian fruit bat and 215 other placental mammals.* -
- Researchers found that certain proteins evolve more slowly in vocal learners and identified a specific brain region responsible for vocal motor control in the Egyptian fruit bat.* -
- Using machine learning, they uncovered 50 regulatory elements that are associated with vocal learning, suggesting that losses in these elements played a role in the evolution of vocal learning in mammals.*
Article Synopsis
- Zoonomia is the largest resource for studying mammalian genomes, analyzing 240 species to find genetic mutations that could impact fitness and disease risk.
- Around 332 million bases in the human genome are highly conserved across species, indicating evolutionary significance, with 4552 of these being ultraconserved.
- The research highlights that most constrained bases are outside protein-coding regions and not annotated, revealing potential insights for understanding unique traits in mammals and informing medical research.
Article Synopsis
- - The study examines how genetic diversity in 240 mammals impacts their resilience and risk of extinction, linking it to historical population sizes.
- - It finds that species with smaller historical populations tend to have more harmful genetic mutations, increasing their extinction risk.
- - Genomic data was shown to effectively predict conservation status, indicating its usefulness for assessing extinction risk when ecological information is lacking.