Gene that helps race horses manage BP could help human athletes, too
- August 6, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Gene that helps race horses manage BP could help human athletes, too
Sub: Sci
Sec: Biotech
Context:
- Researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala reported discovering a DNA sequence in horses that underlies superior racing performance.
- The sequence influenced levels of two proteins involved in regulating blood pressure.
What are the promoter and the enhancer?
- Each horse cell, like each human cell, contains two sets of the genome distributed in 64 chromosomes.
- Promoter:
- A promoter, as related to genomics, is a region of DNA upstream of a gene where relevant proteins (such as RNA polymerase and transcription factors) bind to initiate transcription of that gene.
- The resulting transcription produces an RNA molecule (such as mRNA).
- Enhancer:
- In genetics, an enhancer is a short region of DNA that can be bound by proteins to increase the likelihood that transcription of a particular gene will occur.
- These proteins are usually referred to as transcription factors.
What are the haplotypes?
- A haplotype is a group of alleles in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent.
- Haplotypes are defined by listing the bases differing on one DNA strand.
- The ‘élite’ and the ‘sub-élite’ haplotypes were respectively called EPH and SPH.
- Trotters with the EPH haplotype had significantly lower blood pressure during and after exercise than trotters with the SPH haplotype.
- Since there was no difference before exercise, which suggested to the researchers that the EPH’s blood pressure regulation was related to exercise.
- EPH haplotype also decreased the levels of endothelin1 (EDN1) and increased the levels of endothelin3 (EDN3) which are the proteins involved in regulating blood pressure in the blood.
- Thus, the researchers surmised that if the EPH and the SPH haplotypes enhanced the expression of the EDN3 expression in different ways, they could result in different blood pressure regulation pathways, leading to the differences in racing performance.
What is the impact on humans?
- The researchers found the EPH/SPH haplotype gene was located in chromosome 22 in horse cells and in chromosome 20 in human cells.
- While conducting experiments on human heart tissue to identify the promoters they found that all the promoters that interacted with this sequence belonged to known blood pressure genes.
- Thus, the researchers were able to confirm the human counterpart of the horses’ ‘racing’ gene had a role in regulating blood pressure.