Screening Before We Know: Radical Uncertainties in Expanded Prenatal Genetics


Abstract
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Screening Before We Know: Radical Uncertainties in Expanded Prenatal Geneticsby
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In this article, we discuss the radical uncertainties unleashed by expanded prenatal genetics. We show how we are now routinely screening fetuses in the absence of two essential sorts of information. At the population level, we do not have sound, unbiased data about the prevalence, penetrance, and clinical variability of most mutations. At the level of the proband, it is often too soon to discern relevant information about the fetus’ phenotype. First, we outline the longstanding ethical objections to newborn screen [...] 955 7896 |
Addressing Uncertainty: The Emergence of the CRMS/CFSPID Diagnostic Category Following Newborn Screening for Cystic FibrosisAbstract
This article uses cystic fibrosis as a case study to examine how physicians and scientists have navigated uncertainty following newborn screening. Despite the many benefits of newborn screening, including earlier diagnosis, therapeutic intervention, and a reduced diagnostic odyssey, this public health approach also comes with challenges. For example, physicians began to document infants with indeterminate diagnoses - those with a positive screen who did not clearly fit into the cystic fibrosis or “normal” categorie [...] 901 8133 |
Quadruple Screening in the Age of Cell-Free DNA: What are We Losing?by
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Cell-free DNA has emerged as the most reliable, non-invasive prenatal screening tool for fetal aneuploidies. It has come to replace the previously widely used quadruple screen offered in the second trimester of pregnancy. This change comes with improved detection for aneuploidy but also presents potential gaps in prenatal diagnosis including detection of open fetal defects and emerging data on prediction of adverse pregnancy outcomes. This review article provides a historical summary of the quadruple marker screen [...] 885 12617 |
Plant Breeding Integrated with Genomic-Enabled PredictionAbstract
Plant breeding programs have used conventional breeding methods, such as hybridization, induced mutations, and other methods to manipulate the plant genome within the species' natural genetic boundaries to improve crop varieties. However, repeatedly using conventional breeding methods might lead to the erosion of the gene reservoir, thereby rendering crops vulnerable to environmental stresses and hampering future progress in crop production, food and nutritional security, and socio-economic benefits. Integrating in [...] 1094 10409 |
Prenatal Testing – What Is It Good For? A Review and Critiqueby
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The goals of prenatal testing remain controversial and reflect competing interests of public health, patient rights, disability activists, scholars, feminist critics, commercial laboratories, judiciary/legislative trends, and medical science. This paper reviews and critiques the most common justifications of prenatal testing for fetal aneuploidy that have been put forth over the half century of its existence: reducing the medical and economic burden to society of genetic disease through selective abortion, allowing [...] 1376 12315 |
About Cryptic Acrocentric Pericentromeric Abnormalities in Infertileby
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Cryptic balanced chromosomal aberrations can be an underlying cause of infertility. In 2003 Cockwell and coworkers highlighted the relevance of euchromatic pericentric regions of acrocentric chromosomes that may be a yet ignored genomic region hosting cryptic rearrangements. Here we offer the first follow-up study to further explore this idea. Two specific molecular cytogenetic probe sets were established to elucidate such cryptic rearrangements together with chromosomal heteromorphisms of acrocentric centromeres. [...] 1029 6664 |
Encoding, Regression, and Classification of Transcription Factors’ Specificity and Methylation Effectsby
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The methylation effects on protein-DNA interactions, which can be perceived as a special kind of specificity of transcription factors, have been successfully quantified in the last years by various methods. In this work, I give a summary about the sequence encoding scheme, the underlying additive model about specificity and methylation sensitivity, and the regression strategy to analyze Methyl-Spec-seq data. Then I explain why given the current experimental setup, it is more appropriate to model the methylation eff [...] 1085 6161 |
Epigenetics and Medicineby
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“Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence” (https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/epigenetics.htm). Epigenetic interactions, along with the genetic expression in innate cells, change the structure and function of chromatin, and thus, turn the genes on and off. Epigenetic changes influence dise [...] 1257 7194 |
Genetic Screening of Cervical Cancerby
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Medical genetics plays an important role in the screening and prevention of numerous diseases. Thus, it is important to develop effective screening and prevention programs and improve the assessment of the susceptibility of diseases. The development of screening and prevention programs depends on the identification of early biomarkers (including functional and behavioral) for the risk and onset of the disease, and such programs need to be designed according to internationally accepted criteria. Cervical cancer repr [...] 1431 9429 |
Molecular Mechanisms of Feline CancersAbstract
Feline cancers have not been studied as extensively as canine cancers, though they may offer similar advantages, with cats being immunocompetent animals subject to similar conditions as their human counterparts. The most common feline cancers include lymphoma, squamous cell carcinoma, sarcoma, and mammary tumors, though mast cell tumors were also investigated in this review. As the pathogenesis of many feline cancers remains unclear, this study seeks to elucidate some molecular mechanisms behind feline cancers. Fel [...] 1825 14805 |