Project description:Livestock-associated methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA) CC398 isolated from UK animals belong to European lineages
Project description:Clinical-grade human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) from 4 centres in the UK were cultured in self-renewal conditions Genomic DNA was isolated from low passage hESCs and submitted for SNP analysis using Illumina HumanCytoSNP-12 v2.1 BeadChip arrays
Project description:Genomic surveys of yeast hybrid species isolated from the wild and from human-related environment, aimed at the reconstruction of the natural evolution of Saccharomyces spp. evolution
Project description:Gastric cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death worldwide, but incidence and mortality rates show large variations across different countries. Variation in risk factors between different populations, including environmental and host factors influencing gastric cancer risk, have been reported but little is known about the biological differences between gastric cancers from different geographic locations. We set out to study genomic instability patterns of gastric cancers obtained from patients from United Kingdom (UK) and South Africa (SA). DNA was isolated from 67 gastric adenocarcinomas, 33 UK patients, 9 Caucasian SA patients and 25 native SA patients. Microsatellite instability and chromosomal instability were analyzed by PCR and microarray comparative genomic hybridization, respectively. Data was analyzed by supervised univariate and multivariate analyses as well as unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis. Tumors from Caucasian and native SA patients showed significantly more microsatellite instable tumors (p<0.05). For the microsatellite stable tumors, geographical origin of the patients correlated with cluster membership, derived from unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis (p=0.001). Several chromosomal alterations showed significantly different frequencies in tumors from UK patients and native SA patients, but not between UK patients and Caucasian SA patients and between native and Caucasian SA patients. In conclusion, gastric cancers from South African and UK patients show differences in genetic instability patterns, indicating possible different biological mechanisms underlying the disease.
