Blue-footed Boobies in courtship ritual, North Seymour, Galpagos Islands
Three clips of Blue-footed Boobies. First, a pair conduct the courtship "dance" that they are famous for, with foot displays and "skypointing;" The female ha...
By: Tina Mitchell
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Blue-footed Boobies in courtship ritual, North Seymour, Galpagos Islands - Video
Scrub Island Development Group Ltd., the owner of a British Virgin Islands luxury resort, filed a proposed restructuring plan that resolves a dispute with lender FirstBank Puerto Rico, which forced it to seek court protection.
The company filed a reorganization plan today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Tampa, Florida, where it is based, that will allow it to exit bankruptcy through capital infusions from new and current investors and an agreement with FirstBank reducing its claims of about $120 million.
The plan provides for the settlement and payment of the allowed claims of FirstBank Puerto Rico, and the payment in full of all of the other allowed claims, the company said in court papers.
Scrub Island Development Group owns the island and resort of the same name nestled into the side of the smaller of two halves of a 230-acre private island connected by a narrow strip of land. Its the first resort development built in the British Virgin Islands in more than 15 years, according to its website.
The company sought bankruptcy protection to fight a receivership initiated by FirstBank. Scrub Island Development Group listed debt and assets of more than $100 million each in Chapter 11 documents filed Nov. 19.
Under the restructuring plan the receivership will be dismissed and all the property in the receivers possession would be turned over to reorganized company.
New investors would inject about $9.1 million into reorganized Scrub Island Development Group for a majority equity interest in the company, according to the plan. Current investors in Scrub Island Development Group would contribute about $6 million for a minority equity interest in the reorganized company. The investments will be used to make payments under the plan and fund capital expenditures of the resort.
FirstBank Puerto Rico (FBP) has agreed to receive a $37.5 million secured claim against the reorganized company. The bank would receive an initial payment of $7.5 million from the funds contributed by new investors to reduce that claim. The bank would be paid over five years on a $30 million note and receive 50 percent of the proceeds of any real estate sales. A reserve of about $1.3 million would be set up to fund interest payments.
The bank agreed to waive the right to receive any recovery on an unsecured deficiency claim of $84.9 million, and vote that claim in favor of the plan. Unsecured creditors would be paid in full over five years.
The case is In re Scrub Island Development Group Ltd., 13-15285, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Middle District of Florida (Tampa).
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British Virgin Islands Resort Owner Files Restructuring Plan
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Newswise BETHESDA, MD MARCH 20, 2014 The massive genome of the loblolly pinearound seven times bigger than the human genomeis the largest genome sequenced to date and the most complete conifer genome sequence ever published. This achievement marks the first big test of a new analysis method that can speed up genome assembly by compressing the raw sequence data 100-fold.
The draft genome is described in the March 2014 issue of the journal GENETICS and the journal Genome Biology.
Loblolly pine is the most commercially important tree species in the United States and the source of most American paper products. The tree is also being developed as a feedstock for biofuel. The genome sequence will help scientists breed improved varieties and understand the evolution and diversity of plants. But the enormous size of the pines genome had been an obstacle to sequencing efforts until recently. Its a huge genome. But the challenge isnt just collecting all the sequence data. The problem is assembling that sequence into order, said David Neale, a professor of plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, who led the loblolly pine genome project and is an author on the GENETICS and Genome Biology articles.
Modern genome sequencing methods make it relatively easy to read the individual letters in DNA, but only in short fragments. In the case of the loblolly, 16 billion separate fragments had to be fit back togethera computational puzzle called genome assembly.
We were able to assemble the human genome, but it was close to the limit of our ability; seven times bigger was just too much, said Steven Salzberg, professor of medicine and biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University, one of the directors of the loblolly genome assembly team, who was also an author on the papers.
The scale of the problem can be compared to shredding thousands of copies of the same book and then trying to read the story. You have this big pile of tiny pieces and now you have to reassemble the book, Salzberg said.
The key to the solution was using a new method to pre-process the gargantuan pile of sequence data so that it could all fit within the working memory of a single super-computer. The method, developed by researchers at the University of Maryland, compiles many overlapping fragments of sequence into much larger chunks, then throws away all the redundant information. Eliminating the redundancies leaves the computer with 100 times less sequence data to deal with.
This approach allowed the team to assemble a much more complete genome sequence than the draft assemblies of two other conifer species reported last year. The size of the pieces of consecutive sequence that we assembled are orders of magnitude larger than whats been previously published, said Neale. This will enable the loblolly to serve as a high-quality reference genome that considerably speeds along future conifer genome projects.
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March 20, 2014
Image Caption: Conifers are the predominant members of the 300 million year old Gymnosperm clade. Conifers are also distinguished by their leviathan genomes. The reference genome sequence of Loblolly pine is published in the March issue of the journal GENETICS, published by the Genetics Society of America. Its 22-Gb genome size, makes it the largest genome sequenced and assembled to date. Credit: Dr. Ronald Billings, Texas A&M Forest Service
Genetics Society of America
The massive genome of the loblolly pinearound seven times bigger than the human genomeis the largest genome sequenced to date and the most complete conifer genome sequence ever published. This achievement marks the first big test of a new analysis method that can speed up genome assembly by compressing the raw sequence data 100-fold.
The draft genome is described in the March 2014 issue of GENETICS and the journal Genome Biology.
Loblolly pine is the most commercially important tree species in the United States and the source of most American paper products. The tree is also being developed as a feedstock for biofuel. The genome sequence will help scientists breed improved varieties and understand the evolution and diversity of plants.
But the enormous size of the pines genome had been an obstacle to sequencing efforts until recently. Its a huge genome. But the challenge isnt just collecting all the sequence data. The problem is assembling that sequence into order, said David Neale, a professor of plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, who led the loblolly pine genome project and is an author on the GENETICS and Genome Biology articles.
Modern genome sequencing methods make it relatively easy to read the individual letters in DNA, but only in short fragments. In the case of the loblolly, 16 billion separate fragments had to be fit back togethera computational puzzle called genome assembly.
We were able to assemble the human genome, but it was close to the limit of our ability; seven times bigger was just too much, said Steven Salzberg, professor of medicine and biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University, one of the directors of the loblolly genome assembly team, who was also an author on the papers.
The scale of the problem can be compared to shredding thousands of copies of the same book and then trying to read the story. You have this big pile of tiny pieces and now you have to reassemble the book, Salzberg said.
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This is why health health care reform matters: Keegan #39;s story
Keegan built his own business from the ground upand the Affordable Care Act helped him do it. See how the Affordable Care Act is helping Americans: http://w...
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This is why health health care reform matters: Keegan's story - Video
BA Healthcare Domain Training - Affordable Care Act PEST Analysis by Addiox @848-200-0448
For more BA Healthcare domain training information on healthcare training please visit: http://www.addiox.com || Call us: 848-200-0448 || Email us - info@add...
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BA Healthcare Domain Training - Affordable Care Act PEST Analysis by Addiox @848-200-0448 - Video
Health and Human services secretary discusses health care law
The deadline to sign up for insurance under the affordable care act is less than two weeks away.
By: WLWT
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Health and Human services secretary discusses health care law - Video
Mayor Whaley Highlights Upcoming Health Care Enrollment Events in Dayton
March 17, 2014 - U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius joined Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley to highlight a number of upcoming local e...
By: Dayton, Ohio - City Government
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Mayor Whaley Highlights Upcoming Health Care Enrollment Events in Dayton - Video
LGBT Home Care Access Project | School of Social Work
The LGBT Home Care Access Project is a research initiative of the Faculty of Health and the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, School of Socia...
By: YorkU Liberal Arts Professional Studies
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LGBT Home Care Access Project | School of Social Work - Video
The End Is Near and It #39;s Going to be Awesome: Kevin Williamson - March 19, 2014
The U.S. government is disintegrating ... and that #39;s a good thing, according to National Review contributor Kevin Williamson, whose new book sees innovative ...
By: The Kansas City Public Library
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The End Is Near and It's Going to be Awesome: Kevin Williamson - March 19, 2014 - Video
Sarah Curtis-Fawley will have to offer insurance to her workers at Pacific Pie Co. because of the health care overhaul, and the estimated $100,000 cost means she may have to raise prices or postpone opening a third restaurant.
On the other end of the spectrum, the owner of a 1-800-Got-Junk? franchise near Philadelphia figures he'll save money because his 12 workers now can shop for coverage on public insurance exchanges created by the overhaul.
"For an employer at my level, it's a win," said Eric Blum, franchisee of the junk removal service.
The Affordable Care Act, which aims to provide coverage for millions, is playing to decidedly mixed reviews in corporate America. Its impact on companies varies greatly, depending on factors such as a firm's number of employees and whether it already provides health insurance.
Some businesses are dealing with administrative hassles or rising costs, while others worry about the law's requirement that mid-sized and big companies offer coverage or face penalties. But the law hasn't meant big changes for every company. And some small businesses now can offer employees a benefit they wouldn't be able to afford without the law.
RISING COSTS
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. private employer, expects $330 million in additional health care costs this year in part because company leaders think more employees are signing up for its insurance to meet the law's requirement that most Americans have coverage. The retailer covers about 1.1 million employees and dependents, and enrollment in its health plan will climb by about 100,000 this year.
Some companies that haven't provided insurance are preparing for the requirement that firms with 50 or more full-time employees offer coverage or face a penalty.
Curtis-Fawley said the cost of providing coverage for her 54 employees could amount to a tenth of the Portland, Ore., wholesale pie company's annual revenue of about $1 million. She has been talking with consultants to find an approach that would work.
"I haven't been able to find a plan that would seem to make sense financially," Curtis-Fawley said.
Originally posted here:
By TOM MURPHY AP Business Writer
Sarah Curtis-Fawley will have to offer insurance to her workers at Pacific Pie Co. because of the health care overhaul, and the estimated $100,000 cost means she may have to raise prices or postpone opening a third restaurant.
On the other end of the spectrum, the owner of a 1-800-Got-Junk? franchise near Philadelphia figures he'll save money because his 12 workers now can shop for coverage on public insurance exchanges created by the overhaul.
"For an employer at my level, it's a win," said Eric Blum, franchisee of the junk removal service.
The Affordable Care Act, which aims to provide coverage for millions, is playing to decidedly mixed reviews in corporate America. Its impact on companies varies greatly, depending on factors such as a firm's number of employees and whether it already provides health insurance.
Some businesses are dealing with administrative hassles or rising costs, while others worry about the law's requirement that mid-sized and big companies offer coverage or face penalties. But the law hasn't meant big changes for every company. And some small businesses now can offer employees a benefit they wouldn't be able to afford without the law.
RISING COSTS
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. private employer, expects $330 million in additional health care costs this year in part because company leaders think more employees are signing up for its insurance to meet the law's requirement that most Americans have coverage. The retailer covers about 1.1 million employees and dependents, and enrollment in its health plan will climb by about 100,000 this year.
Some companies that haven't provided insurance are preparing for the requirement that firms with 50 or more full-time employees offer coverage or face a penalty.
Curtis-Fawley said the cost of providing coverage for her 54 employees could amount to a tenth of the Portland, Ore., wholesale pie company's annual revenue of about $1 million. She has been talking with consultants to find an approach that would work.
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NEW ORLEANS, LA (WVUE) - With the clock ticking, President Obama's point person on health care reform stopped in New Orleans Thursday afternoon to encourage locals to sign up for health insurance through the federal government's website, healthcare.gov. The deadline for enrollment to avoid a federal penalty is March 31.
"There's a big need in this state," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Before the rollout of healthcare.gov in October, the federal government put the number of uninsured Louisiana residents at close to 800,000.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in the New Orleans area, the number of enrollees has climbed to close to 20,000.
"And as of March 1, because of the work of many of the people who are in this room, 17,000 individuals in the New Orleans and Metairie area have enrolled," said Landrieu, who attended the media event along with Sebelius.
Local Democrats showed off a young entrepreneur who recently signed up for coverage through healthcare.gov. Chris Merritt said he had been without coverage for five years and thinks health care reform is necessary to get more people covered.
"My monthly payment is $52.72 a month," Merritt said.
But despite Merritt's story, Sebelius conceded that it remains a challenge to get young people to sign up for health insurance.
"A lot of younger, healthier Americans don't get up every day thinking 'what I really need is health care,' so we're trying to be creative with outreach," she said.
Healthy young adults are needed in the health care reform marketplace to keep it viable.
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One of the problems dragging down the US health care system is that nobody trusts one another. Most of us, as individuals, place faith in our personal health care providers, which may or may not be warranted. But on a larger scale were all suspicious of each other:
Yet everyone has beneficent goals and good ideas for improving health care. Doctors want to feel effective, patients want to stay well (even if that desire doesnt always translate into action), the Department of Health and Human Services champions very lofty goals for data exchange and quality improvement, clinical researchers put their work above family and comfort, and even private insurance companies are trying moving to fee for value programs that ensure coordinated patient care.
What can we do to stop pulling in different directions and put our best ideas into practice? Data is often the impetus to trust. If we collect data on the most important activities in health and use it wisely, we mayperhapsbe able to set up a system in which everyone can place their trust.
So lets look at four key areas of health care reformfee for value cost containment, patient engagement, clinical research, and quality improvementsto see how data can interact with new ways of working to fix the problem of trust.
Software companies have learned not to pay programmers by the amount of code they write, and corporations are learning not to pay lawyers by billable hours. Medicare and private insurers are trying hard to move similarly from paying doctors for the number of procedures performed to paying them to actually cure the patient.
The key to paying doctors fairly is risk stratification, which places each patient in a stratum based on how hard he or she is to cure. If I have high blood pressure, it makes my heart disease harder to cure, and if I have high blood pressure along with diabetes and obesity, it makes the job even harder. Fee-for-value pays doctors a different amount if the patient has contributing problems (appealingly called comorbidities), and thus forces them to consider all the factors instead of just treating one condition in isolation.
But how much should each patient cost? Here is where data becomes critical. We need to know how much care was needed by a large set of patients who suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Throw in tobacco use and other comorbidities and you see how complicated risk stratification is.
To get straight to the point: we cant figure all that out now. We just dont have the data. To do risk stratification right:
I think the institutions driving fee-for-value (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and private insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts) have to bite the bullet and accept that we are not ready for risk stratification on a scale that will put fee-for-value on a valid foundation. When we factor in health provider qualitywhich Ill cover laterthe hill becomes even harder to climb.
Before I look for solutions to this dilemma, Ill turn to the other issues of trust.
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Burlington Post
Halton Hospitals: Building Our Health Care is a special Metroland Media West four-part project that explores the critical need for, status and funding of numerous hospital expansion/construction projects in Haltons four municipalities Oakville, Burlington, Milton and Georgetown.
A hospital is the heartbeat of a community.
Its where babies take their first breath and where families say goodbye to loved ones.
Broken arms are cast, chemotherapy is administered, blood pressure is monitored and hips are replaced.
Burlingtons Joseph Brant Hospital, formerly called Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital, opened in 1961.
As the community has grown, the hospitals resources, from staff to space, have been stretched.
The 2012-13 fiscal year saw 13,258 admissions, 47,326 emergency department visits and 1,459 births. Approximately 73 per cent of patients live in Burlington.
Joseph Brant Hospital is slated for a two-phase redevelopment and expansion, which started last year and will continue for the next five years. The end result of the more than $300-million initiative will be a new patient tower, renovated existing building, on-site health centre and parking garage.
Eric Vandewall, president and chief executive officer of Joseph Brant Hospital, says the new facility will enable staff to provide the best possible patient care.
Link:
By TOM MURPHY AP Business Writer
Sarah Curtis-Fawley will have to offer insurance to her workers at Pacific Pie Co. because of the health care overhaul, and the estimated $100,000 cost means she may have to raise prices or postpone opening a third restaurant.
On the other end of the spectrum, the owner of a 1-800-Got-Junk? franchise near Philadelphia figures he'll save money because his 12 workers now can shop for coverage on public insurance exchanges created by the overhaul.
"For an employer at my level, it's a win," said Eric Blum, franchisee of the junk removal service.
The Affordable Care Act, which aims to provide coverage for millions, is playing to decidedly mixed reviews in corporate America. Its impact on companies varies greatly, depending on factors such as a firm's number of employees and whether it already provides health insurance.
Some businesses are dealing with administrative hassles or rising costs, while others worry about the law's requirement that mid-sized and big companies offer coverage or face penalties. But the law hasn't meant big changes for every company. And some small businesses now can offer employees a benefit they wouldn't be able to afford without the law.
RISING COSTS
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. private employer, expects $330 million in additional health care costs this year in part because company leaders think more employees are signing up for its insurance to meet the law's requirement that most Americans have coverage. The retailer covers about 1.1 million employees and dependents, and enrollment in its health plan will climb by about 100,000 this year.
Some companies that haven't provided insurance are preparing for the requirement that firms with 50 or more full-time employees offer coverage or face a penalty.
Curtis-Fawley said the cost of providing coverage for her 54 employees could amount to a tenth of the Portland, Ore., wholesale pie company's annual revenue of about $1 million. She has been talking with consultants to find an approach that would work.
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Grace Wilsey was born with NGLY1 deficiency, which is caused by two mutations in the NGLY1 gene.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- What do you do when your baby lies limp in your arms, staring blankly into the distance while never crying?
What do you do when tests show signs of liver damage and your baby's seizures won't stop, but doctors can't tell you what's wrong or how to fix it?
Thanks to the Human Genome Project, which was completed in 2003, identifying new genetic mutations has gotten easier and cheaper. But geneticists often struggle to find patients who share these rare DNA quirks. Studying multiple patients with the same gene mutations and similar symptoms is crucial to identifying a new genetic disorder.
That's why a paper published Thursday in the journal Genetics in Medicine is so remarkable.
The paper identifies NGLY1 deficiency as an inherited genetic disorder, caused by mutations in the NGLY1 gene. The researchers have confirmed eight patients with these mutations who share several symptoms, including developmental delays, abnormal tear production and liver disease.
And they credit an "Internet blog" with bringing the patients and scientists together.
Grace's genome
Grace Wilsey's parents knew something was wrong right away. Their newborn daughter was lethargic. Her eyes seemed hollow and unfocused. She refused to eat. Doctors at the hospital ran multiple tests, but couldn't come up with a diagnosis.
Original post:
Grace Wilsey was born with NGLY1 deficiency, which is caused by two mutations in the NGLY1 gene.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- What do you do when your baby lies limp in your arms, staring blankly into the distance while never crying?
What do you do when tests show signs of liver damage and your baby's seizures won't stop, but doctors can't tell you what's wrong or how to fix it?
Thanks to the Human Genome Project, which was completed in 2003, identifying new genetic mutations has gotten easier and cheaper. But geneticists often struggle to find patients who share these rare DNA quirks. Studying multiple patients with the same gene mutations and similar symptoms is crucial to identifying a new genetic disorder.
That's why a paper published Thursday in the journal Genetics in Medicine is so remarkable.
The paper identifies NGLY1 deficiency as an inherited genetic disorder, caused by mutations in the NGLY1 gene. The researchers have confirmed eight patients with these mutations who share several symptoms, including developmental delays, abnormal tear production and liver disease.
And they credit an "Internet blog" with bringing the patients and scientists together.
Grace's genome
Grace Wilsey's parents knew something was wrong right away. Their newborn daughter was lethargic. Her eyes seemed hollow and unfocused. She refused to eat. Doctors at the hospital ran multiple tests, but couldn't come up with a diagnosis.
The rest is here:
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
20-Mar-2014
Contact: Erin Digitale digitale@stanford.edu 650-724-9175 Stanford University Medical Center
STANFORD, Calif. Scientists and parents have worked together to identify a new genetic disease that causes neurologic, muscle, eye and liver problems in children. The discovery was unusually fast thanks to a combination of modern gene-sequencing techniques, social media and old-fashioned detective work.
One important clue was that affected children cry without making tears.
The new disease, called NGLY1 deficiency, is described in a paper that will be published online March 20 in Genetics in Medicine, the journal of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. The paper describes eight children with mutations in the gene coding for N-glycanase 1, an enzyme that recycles defective products from a cellular assembly line. Children who lack this enzyme have varying degrees of movement disorders, including a characteristic combination of muscle contractions that causes abnormal tremulous movements. They also have developmental delays and liver problems. The gene defect is so rare that until recently, finding eight affected individuals would have taken several years; instead, the children were found in a matter of months.
"This represents a complete change in the way we're going about clinical medicine," said Gregory Enns, MB, ChB, associate professor of genetics in pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine and co-lead author of the new paper. Gene-sequencing tools have sped the translation of findings between clinical and lab settings; in addition, scientists around the globe and lay people are contributing to the discovery process.
"This is happening so quickly because of the integration of the families with the researchers, and because so many people are coming at this from so many angles," said Enns, who is also a geneticist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford and Stanford Children's Health. Other co-authors of the paper come from 12 research institutions across the United States, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom.
"The relief of finally getting a diagnosis is just life-changing," said Kristen Wilsey, mother of Grace Wilsey, 4, who was the second American patient, and among the first few in the world, to be identified with NGLY1 deficiency. Grace's diagnosis was a pivotal moment not just for her San Francisco Bay Area family but also for defining the new disease, since the comparison of multiple patients allowed researchers to confirm that the disease existed.
The enzyme that is missing in NGLY1-deficiency patients is normally found in cells throughout the body. N-glycanase 1 helps break down incorrectly shaped proteins so their components can be reused. The new research confirmed that children with a defective NGLY1 gene do not make the N-glycanase enzyme. The researchers also observed that the children's liver biopsies contained an amorphous substance, which they suspected was an accumulation of protein that did not get recycled.
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Scientists, parents join forces to identify new genetic disease in children
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
20-Mar-2014
Contact: Shawna Williams shawna@jhmi.edu 410-955-8236 Johns Hopkins Medicine
Many diseases have their origins in either the genome or in reversible chemical changes to DNA known as the epigenome. Now, results of a new study from Johns Hopkins scientists show a connection between these two "maps." The findings, reported March 20 on the website of the American Journal of Human Genetics, could help disease trackers find patterns in those overlays that could offer clues to the causes of and possible treatments for complex genetic conditions, including many cancers and metabolic disorders.
"By showing the connections between genetic variants and epigenetic information, we're providing epidemiologists with a road map," says Andy Feinberg, M.D., M.P.H., a Gilman Scholar, the King Fahd Professor of Medicine and the director of the Center for Epigenetics in the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Epigenetic tags show how disease-causing genetic variants might affect distant genes that in turn contribute to the disease."
Feinberg says it has long been known that individual genetic variants in sections of DNA that don't contain blueprints for proteins (once thought of as "junk DNA") seem to alter the quantity of proteins produced far afield. That phenomenon has made it very hard for researchers to pinpoint the source of some genetic diseases or targets for their treatment. This study, Feinberg says, shows that these genetic variants may be acting on distant protein-forming genes by influencing epigenetic tags, or chemical add-ons, atop the DNA.
Feinberg; co-leader Dani Fallin, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Mental Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and director of the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities; and their team analyzed genetic data from hundreds of healthy participants in three studies to first figure out what a normal epigenetic pattern looks like. Although it's now common to compare the genomes of healthy and sick populations to identify predispositions for diseases, it has not been possible to compare epigenomes this way. The researchers zoomed in on one type of epigenetic change, the attachment of a chemical tag called a methyl group to a particular site on DNA. Known as methylation, these tags affect whether genes produce any protein, and if so, how much.
The team then looked for the relationship between the resulting epigenetic data and genetic data. Human genetic code is marked by telltale blocks of DNA that children tend to inherit from their parents in unbroken chunks called haplotypes. One of these blocks is often fingered as a suspect when a genetic disease arises. However, since the blocks are comprised of hundreds of thousands of "letters" of DNA code, researchers are not often able to identify the culprit mutation, or the protein-forming genes it affects, which may lie somewhere else in the block.
Epigenetic signatures like methylation patterns also occur in blocks, which the team dubbed "GeMes," for methylation blocks controlled by genes. The researchers found that the GeMes overlapped with the long genetic blocks but were much shorter.
That led them to suspect that the protein-coding genes turned on or off by those tags must be at the root of the disease associated with a particular genetic variant found elsewhere in the block.
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