The ABO blood group is clinically the most important blood group system. Elucidation of the molecular basis of the ABO polymorphism allows genotype determination without family studies. Described here is a new method based on the simultaneous amplification by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of 3 fragments from exon 6, and 5′ and 3′ ends of exon 7 of the ABO gene, followed by single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis. This multiplex PCR-SSCP protocol allows the well-established base changes at 9 nucleotide positions 261, 297, 467, 526, 646, 657, 681, 1059, and 1096 to be assayed simultaneously so that 7 common alleles (A1, A1v, A2, B, O1, O1v, and O2) can be distinguished in a single-tube single-lane format. Each allele was characterized by a set of 3 haplotype-specific SSCP patterns. Chinese (n = 125) and white European (n = 98) samples were analyzed, and their genotypes were found consistent with the serologic phenotypes or could be deduced unambiguously. Fifteen samples (2 Chinese and 13 white European) were each found carrying at least 1 rare allele. Most of these alleles were new and some might be generated by intragenic recombination. This technique is the simplest, quickest, and most informative method reported to date and also readily identifies new alleles.

Myopia is the most common human eye disorder and it results from complex genetic and environmental causes. The rapidly increasing prevalence of myopia poses a major public health challenge. Here, the CREAM consortium performs a joint meta-analysis to test single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) main effects and SNP × education interaction effects on refractive error in 40,036 adults from 25 studies of European ancestry and 10,315 adults from 9 studies of Asian ancestry. In European ancestry individuals, we identify six novel loci (FAM150B-ACP1, LINC00340, FBN1, DIS3L-MAP2K1, ARID2-SNAT1 and SLC14A2) associated with refractive error. In Asian populations, three genome-wide significant loci AREG, GABRR1 and PDE10A also exhibit strong interactions with education (P<8.5 × 10−5), whereas the interactions are less evident in Europeans. The discovery of these loci represents an important advance in understanding how gene and environment interactions contribute to the heterogeneity of myopia.

Pathway analysis methods will be more readily used for integration of multiple sources of data, and enable more accurate prediction of phenotypes.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are critical regulators of gene expression that may be used to identify the pathological pathways influenced by disease and cellular interactions. Viral miRNAs (v-miRNAs) encoded by both DNA and RNA viruses induce immune dysregulation, virus production, and disease pathogenesis. Given the absence of effective treatment and the prevalence of highly infective SARS-CoV-2 strains, improved understanding of viral-associated miRNAs could provide novel mechanistic insights into the pathogenesis of COVID-19. In this study, SARS-CoV-2 v-miRNAs were identified by deep sequencing in infected Calu-3 and Vero E6 cell lines. Among the ~0.1% small RNA sequences mapped to the SARS-CoV-2 genome, the top ten SARS-CoV-2 v-miRNAs (including three encoded by the N gene; v-miRNA-N) were selected. After initial screening of conserved v-miRNA-N-28612, which was identified in both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, its expression was shown to be positively associated with viral load in COVID-19 patients. Further in silico analysis and synthetic-mimic transfection of validated SARS-CoV-2 v-miRNAs revealed novel functional targets and associations with mechanisms of cellular metabolism and biosynthesis. Our findings support the development of v-miRNA-based biomarkers and therapeutic strategies based on improved understanding of the pathophysiology of COVID-19.

We report the first demonstration of platinum nanoparticles–reduced graphene oxide nanocomposites as peroxidase mimetics for colorimetric DNA detection.