Project description:There is growing evidence that genomic DNA sequence changes occur in individual somatic cells during the lifetime of an individual and accumulation of these changes may influence aging and disease. In light of this, and contradicting reports regarding discordant copy number profiles between MZ twins(BARANZINI et al. 2010; BRUDER et al. 2008), we set out to identify de novo somatic copy number mutations in DNA from blood for MZ twin pairs of Mexican American descent who were participants of the San Antonio Family Heart Study (SAFHS) or San Antonio Family Diabetes/Gallbladder study (SAFDGS). By applying circular binary segmentation (CBS) to B-allele ratio differences we determined that the 3 MZ twin pairs in this study had concordant copy number profiles. We also detected 2 de novo germ-line CNVs in 2 MZ twin pairs from the SAFHS.
