BACKGROUND Mutations in BRCA1 and/or BRCA2 (BRCA1/2) profoundly increase the risks of breast and ovarian cancers, but it is unclear whether mutations in these genes increase the risk of colorectal cancer. We investigated BRCA1/2 founder mutations and a family history of breast cancer as potential risk factors for colorectal cancer. METHODS In the population-based Molecular Epidemiology of Col...

Finnish samples have been extensively utilized in studying single-gene disorders, where the founder effect has clearly aided in discovery, and more recently in genome-wide association studies of complex traits, where the founder effect has had less obvious impacts. As the field starts to explore rare variants' contribution to polygenic traits, it is of great importance to characterize and confi...

The advantages of inbred or founder populations for genetic studies were first noted over 30 years ago [1–3], but interest in these populations was renewed as a result of the explosion of molecular biological techniques and the initiation of the Human Genome Project [4,5]. The relatively small number of founders and recent ancestries that are characteristic of these populations facilitate the s...

The body wall muscle of a Drosophila larva is generated by fusion between founder cells and fusion-competent myoblasts (FCMs). Initially, a founder cell recognizes and fuses with one or two FCMs to form a muscle precursor, then the developing syncitia fuses with additional FCMs to form a muscle fiber. These interactions require members of the immunoglobulin superfamily (IgSF), with Kin-of-IrreC...

studbook information collected from 1988 to 2011 in jafarabad breeding station of moghani sheep, north-west of iran, related to 9,457 lambs were used to study the genetic diversity and to evaluate the effectiveness of an implemented rotational mating scheme using pedigree analysis. lambs born during 2009-2011 were considered as reference population. means inbreeding and average coancestry for t...