👤 Alexander J German

Obesity is a heritable disease, but its genetic basis is incompletely understood. Canine population history facilitates trait mapping. We performed a canine genome-wide association study for body condition score-a measure of obesity-in 241 Labrador retrievers. Using a cross-species approach, we showed that canine obesity genes are also associated with rare and common forms of obesity in humans. The lead canine association was within the gene DENN domain containing 1B ( Show less

Prosody has a vital function in speech, structuring a speaker's intended message for the listener. The superior temporal gyrus (STG) is considered a critical hub for prosody, but the role of earlier auditory regions like Heschl's gyrus (HG), associated with pitch processing, remains unclear. Using intracerebral recordings in humans and non-human primate models, we investigated prosody processing in narrative speech, focusing on pitch accents-abstract phonological units that signal word prominence and communicative intent. In humans, HG encoded pitch accents as abstract representations beyond spectrotemporal features, distinct from segmental speech processing, and outperforms STG in disambiguating pitch accents. Multivariate models confirm HG's unique representation of pitch accent categories. In the non-human primate, pitch accents were not abstractly encoded, despite robust spectrotemporal processing, highlighting the role of experience in shaping abstract representations. These findings emphasize a key role for the HG in early prosodic abstraction and advance our understanding of human speech processing. Show less

Molecular research for genetic variants underlying body weight (BW) provides crucial information for this important selected trait when developing productive poultry breeds, lines and crosses. We searched for molecular markers-single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)-and candidate genes associated with this trait in 240 F Show less

Resource trade-off theory suggests that increased performance on a given trait comes at the cost of decreased performance on other traits. Growth data from 1889 subjects (996 girls) were used from the GrowUp1974 Gothenburg study. Energy Trade-Off (ETO) between height and weight for individuals with extreme body types was characterized using a novel ETO-Score (ETOS). Four extreme body types were defined based on height and ETOI at early adulthood: tall-slender, short-stout, short-slender, and tall-stout; their growth trajectories assessed from ages 0.5-17.5 years.A GWAS using UK BioBank data was conducted to identify gene variants associated with height, BMI, and for the first time with ETOS. Height and ETOS trajectories show a two-hit pattern with profound changes during early infancy and at puberty for tall-slender and short-stout body types. Several loci (including FTO, ADCY3, GDF5, ) and pathways were identified by GWAS as being highly associated with ETOS. The most strongly associated pathways were related to "extracellular matrix," "signal transduction," "chromatin organization," and "energy metabolism." ETOS represents a novel anthropometric trait with utility in describing body types. We discovered the multiple genomic loci and pathways probably involved in energy trade-off. Show less