Genetic DNA testing for ancestry and ethnic origin. 6

Genetic DNA testing for racial DNA ancestry is popular. But genetic mapping of ethnic origin can help find cancer risk factors. Ancestry DNA tests can help autoimmune disease diagnosis and treatment.

Genetic DNA testing for racial DNA ancestry and ethnic origin. Dr. Esteban G. Gonzalez, MD. Ethnic DNA ancestry is important at individual genetic level. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. It determines susceptibility to disease, including asthma and multiple sclerosis. Personal example from top expert in Precision Medicine from California. Medical Second Opinion is a personal example of genetic diversity. He talks about his life and career. Medical Second Opinion. Professor Burchard is a member of expert panel on President Barack Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative. Video interview with top expert in medical genetics and genetic DNA ancestry. Medical second opinion confirms that cancer diagnosis is correct and complete. Medical second opinion ensures that genetic DNA ancestry information is included in diagnosis of cancer diagnosis. Medical second opinion also helps to choose the best personalized treatment strategy for cancer. Seek medical second opinion on tumor diagnosis. Be confident that your precision medicine treatment is the best. Genetic DNA testing for racial DNA ancestry and ethnic origin. Medical Second Opinion. Today ethnic origin is often based on self-reported skin color or facial features. Your research shows this. Dr. Esteban G. Gonzalez, MD. The notion of race as a large homogeneous group is outdated. What matters is genetic ancestral DNA makeup at individual gene level. We just discussed this in several questions. Each person has many often unexpected ancestral DNA origins of genes. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. You sequenced your own genome. So perhaps on your own example you could illustrate the real genetic diversity of each individual. Please discuss the implications of genetic DNA ancestry diversity for modern personalized medicine. Medical Second Opinion (Professor of Pharmacogenomics, UCSF). I used a company called 23andme. Each of us has 23 chromosomes. They are from our mom and our dad. We used a million genetic markers. We precisely estimated what my global DNA ancestry was. Then we estimated my local DNA ancestry. So my global DNA ancestry is this. I am 25% percent Native American. I am 7% percent African. I am also a European. But I could tell you this about my local DNA ancestry. My insulin gene is Native American in origin. This puts me at high risk for diabetes. That’s the case for many populations in Europe. Europeans tend to be more genetically homogeneous than Hispanics. Dr. Esteban G. Gonzalez, MD. But that doesn’t mean Europeans are all the same. It means that there is a gradation. We know that. Russia is tremendously diverse country. You have different ethnic groups. There are different parts from east-west and north-south. You have great historical events that happened in Russia. They led to the mixing of different cultures. Today we’re a summation of all those different events. Medical Second Opinion. It’s very interesting that some of the stories that you previously discussed. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. The way you were brought up in San Francisco. How you grew up in a truly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural background. That really influenced your personal path in medicine. This determined the choices you made in life. That’s how the genes and environment interplay at each level. Dr. Esteban G. Gonzalez, MD. Yes, it was fascinating. My mom was a migrant farmworker. She was Hispanic, very dark. She did not speak English. She learned English, she went to school, she became a schoolteacher. My dad was caucasian but they got divorced. Finances got very tight. We were helped by a Chinese family. They took me in. That made it a fun childhood experience. Dr. Anton Titov. You went to Chinese school for two years. I spent a lot of time in San Francisco Chinatown. This is world-famous. I got into high school. I needed discipline. So I started wrestling. It’s one of the great sports. It’s the oldest sport in the world. My coach was an African-American on 1984 US Olympic team. He won the Tbilisi tournament in wrestling. There are a lot of people who are quite famous wrestlers from the Soviet Union republics. Yeah, all those countries, Uzbekistan, Iran, and so forth. My clinical trial partner was also African-American NCAA finalist. He was the best you could be in college. I took that wrestling. I applied to medical school. Dr. Esteban G. Gonzalez, MD. Once I did that, medical school was relatively easy. Yes it was hard. It was one of the biggest accomplishments I have ever had. But going from my college to Stanford really was a testament to the discipline. I learned it in wrestling. I graduated top of my class in Stanford.  I went to train at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. I went from my college of 30,000 students to a medical school class of 86. Then I went to the residency class of 42. I came back to UCSF with the class of six. At every level the microscope kept getting harder. It was more focused, more focused, more focused. I attribute a lot of my stamina, my persistence, my goal setting, my visualization to what I learned in wrestling.  I’m very grateful to have had those experiences. I’m very grateful that I had all the ethnically diverse experiences. I went from Hispanic family where I spoke Spanish. Then I went to a Chinese family where I went and learned Chinese. I then did a medical school. I lived in Jewish house for two years. I had black wrestling coaches throughout for ten years. It has been a tremendous experience. It basically shaped my view of science. I was at Harvard. It really opened up an opportunity. I call it a personal passion meets academic rigor. We led a clinical trial looking at African Americans and Caucasians for asthma severity. African Americans die more often from asthma. We identified a gene associated with with lung severity disease. That gene was 40% percent more common in African Americans. There was a Eureka moment for my career. The light bulb was switched on. All the differences that we see between populations might in part be explained by genetic differences. Dr. Esteban G. Gonzalez, MD. That just set me off for the rest my life. I started looking at Hispanics. Hispanics on the East Coast had 3 fold higher prevalence rate of asthma. They had 3 fold higher death rate from asthma compared to other Hispanics. Hispanics on East Coast are primarily Puerto Rican. Being Hispanic myself I knew, I just put one and one together. There were ancestral DNA differences between the groups. We have done that. We have been working on this since 1997. It’s been tremendous. We are the only ones in the country that have this resource. We built the largest minority dataset in the United States for children. We just got funded by the National Institutes for Health. We look at the whole genome sequences in drug response between different racial groups. We are making not just scientific impact. We are making a clinically significant impact. It is a public health impact. But the results are not just relevant to Hispanics or African Americans in the United States. They are relevant to all populations. That’s why I go back to all the different countries in former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. They’re all great wrestlers. Dr. Esteban G. Gonzalez, MD. You are not a homogeneous population as well. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Medical Second Opinion. So that’s a very important implication. Medical Second Opinion. Yes. DNA testing for racial DNA ancestry and ethnic origin. Broad racial groups are outdated. Genetic DNA ancestry at individual gene level important for diseases.