Biomedical subjects
Nigel Williams
Publications and source records attributed to Nigel Williams.
Gene passport prospects raise concerns.
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Y studies address the Ridley riddle.
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Death of Dolly marks cloning milestone.
Dolly the cloned sheep marked both an icon of scientific possibility and a potential ethical nightmare. Researchers in related fields of stem cell research need to learn the lessons and the right vocabulary if they are to make progress in their fields.
Click to connect.
Humans have been enormously successful in exploiting a range of sounds used in language, but none more so than the click consonants used by a few populations in eastern and southern Africa. New research suggests these click languages represent an ancient human language.
Seeking balance in the GM crop debate.
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Stemming species loss.
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Nervous systems.
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Research fears in funding shake-up.
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How does the beetle cross the road?
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Islander's ancient links.
The power of genetic analyses to study relationships between human populations is growing rapidly but there are some worries about the use of historically collected human material. Nigel Williams reports on a new study showing the value of such approaches.
Evolution and disease.
A recent meeting highlighted how much Darwinian thinking on natural selection illuminates the background to some major current human diseases and may offer insight into many more. Nigel Williams reports on a field seeking a place in mainstream medical education.
Chipping away at the old block.
With growing concern that women are still failing to progress in scientific careers, many countries are trying to address the problem. The British government has just received a hard-hitting report with recommendations for swift action to tackle the problems. Nigel Williams reports.
Variation in the protocadherin gamma A gene cluster.
We screened for variation in the 12 protocadherin gamma A (PCDHGA) genes of the protocadherin cluster on chromosome 5q31. We used denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography followed by sequencing to identify changes in the DNA sequence. We identified 24 nonsynonymous changes, 24 synonymous SNPs, and 9 polymorphisms in the 5' flanking regions. The variant with the greatest predicted impact on the encoded protein was a frameshift polymorphism in PCDHGA8, caused by a deletion of one C base (Pro174fsdelC). The del variant was more common in 512 controls compared to 506 schizophrenic (SZ) cases (10.6% vs 7.2%, p=0.007) but this trend was not replicated in an independent sample of 403 trios, in which it was transmitted 47 times and not transmitted 55 times from heterozygous parents (p=0.43). We screened 10 of the common polymorphisms for association with schizophrenia by genotyping pooled DNA from 540 SZ cases and 540 controls, but none of them showed a significant difference. It will be important to identify the phenotype associated with the loss of the PCDHGA8 gene.
Down but not out.
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