This guest post was contributed by Taru Tukiainen, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Analytic and Translational Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
The X chromosome contains around 5% of DNA in the human genome, but has remained largely unexplored in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) – to date, roughly two thirds of GWAS have thrown the X-chromosomal data out of their analyses. In a paper published in PLOS Genetics yesterday we dig into X chromosome associations and demonstrate why this stretch of DNA warrants particular attention in genetic association and sequencing studies. This post will focus on one of our key results: the possibility that some of the X chromosome loci contribute to sexual dimorphism, i.e. biological differences between men and women.
Continue reading ‘The undiscovered chromosome’
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