The good news in our DNA: Defects you can fix with vitamins and minerals
As the cost of sequencing a single human genome drops rapidly, with one company predicting a price of $100 per person in five years, soon the only reason not to look at your "personal genome" will be fear of what bad news lies in your genes.
University of California, Berkeley, scientists, however, have found a welcome reason to delve into your genetic heritage: to find the slight genetic flaws that can be fixed with remedies as simple as vitamin or mineral supplements.
"There are over 600 human enzymes that use vitamins or minerals as cofactors, and this study reports just what we found by studying one of them," Rine said. "What this means is that, even if the odds of an individual having a defect in one gene is low, with 600 genes, we are all likely to have some mutations that limit one or more of our enzymes."
The subtle effects of variation in enzyme activity may well account for conflicting results of some clinical trials, including the confusing data on the effect of vitamin supplements, he noted. In the future, the enzyme profile of research subjects will have to be taken into account in analyzing the outcome of clinical trials.
If one considers not just vitamin-dependent enzymes but all the 30,000 human proteins in the genome, "every individual would harbor approximately 250 deleterious substitutions considering only the low-frequency variants. These numbers suggest that the aggregate incidence of low-frequency variants could have a significant physiological impact," the researchers wrote in their paper.
Do you want to know more?
University of California, Berkeley, scientists, however, have found a welcome reason to delve into your genetic heritage: to find the slight genetic flaws that can be fixed with remedies as simple as vitamin or mineral supplements.
"There are over 600 human enzymes that use vitamins or minerals as cofactors, and this study reports just what we found by studying one of them," Rine said. "What this means is that, even if the odds of an individual having a defect in one gene is low, with 600 genes, we are all likely to have some mutations that limit one or more of our enzymes."
The subtle effects of variation in enzyme activity may well account for conflicting results of some clinical trials, including the confusing data on the effect of vitamin supplements, he noted. In the future, the enzyme profile of research subjects will have to be taken into account in analyzing the outcome of clinical trials.
If one considers not just vitamin-dependent enzymes but all the 30,000 human proteins in the genome, "every individual would harbor approximately 250 deleterious substitutions considering only the low-frequency variants. These numbers suggest that the aggregate incidence of low-frequency variants could have a significant physiological impact," the researchers wrote in their paper.
Do you want to know more?
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