does anyone know what "loss of heterozygosity means?

[peach4me]

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well?

 

[jonb12997]

Uniparental Parental/Maternal Disomy b/c of trisomy rescue maybe?? I dunno

 

[racerx]

I am gonna gueass, so it may be wrong...Could it be the loss of a particular allele because of inbreeding? For example, there are certain genetic diseases that have begun to crop up in the Amish community because there is much marrying/breeding of relatives. If they have the same alleles, eventually, unless there is some mutation of the allele in an individual that can then reproduce, there will be only one allele, resulting in only homozygous offspring. Therefore, loss of heterozygosity.

Just a guess.

 

[yeeester]

it refers to gene conversion. say you have a person who is heterozygous for a recessive mutation in an oncogene, lets call it gn1 (made up). the homozygous recessive mutation promotes cell proliferation. loss of heterozygosity refers to the loss of the dominant, wildtype mutation to become homozygous for the recessive (or it could happen the other way i guess, but that wouldn't cause harm). then you have a cell that is homozygous recessive, and could cause cancer at some point down the road. this term should be defined and discussed in more depth in a genetics text.

y

 

[dynx]

it refers to gene conversion. say you have a person who is heterozygous for a recessive mutation in an oncogene, lets call it gn1 (made up). the homozygous recessive mutation promotes cell proliferation. loss of heterozygosity refers to the loss of the dominant, wildtype mutation to become homozygous for the recessive (or it could happen the other way i guess, but that wouldn't cause harm). then you have a cell that is homozygous recessive, and could cause cancer at some point down the road. this term should be defined and discussed in more depth in a genetics text.

y

Replace oncogene with tumor supressor gene and you're right on. Look up retinoblastoma. Im kinda amazed people in medical school don't know this.