Genetically informed atlases in brain reveal new landscapes about its structure, says study
California [US], February 8 : A locus in genetics indicates the physical location of a gene or variant on a chromosome. The plural for it is loci. Now, an international team of scientists has used atlases of the human brain informed by genetics to identify hundreds of genomic loci.
Their study was published in 'Science'.
The work was led by Chi-Hua Chen, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Radiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
"The complexity of the human brain has equally eluded and fascinated scientists for centuries," said first author Carolina Makowski, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow working with Chen.
"A large part of how our brain is shaped boils down to what is entwined in our DNA. The last decade has seen a flourish in studies mapping different regions of the brain to unique genetic codes that naturally vary in the population. The way these brain regions are defined, however, can have an important impact on findings, something that we highlight in this work," she said.
By and large, construction of the human brain is determined by heredity, though factors like environmental exposures also play a role, particularly during sensitive periods of neurodevelopment during childhood. Large-scale MRI and genetic datasets have increasingly illuminated the common genetic variants that help build the human cerebral cortex -- the outer, layered sheet of wrinkled tissue associated with humans' highest mental capabilities, such as language, memory, perception, awareness and consciousness.
( Details and picture courtesy ANI, the content is auto-generated from the feed.)
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