Genetic research and testing in sport and exercise science: A review of the issues

Abstract

This review is based on the BASES position stand on “Genetic Research and Testing in Sport and Exercise Science”. Our aims are first to introduce the reader to research in sport and exercise genetics and then to highlight ethical problems arising from such research and its applications. Sport and exercise genetics research in the form of transgenic animal and human association studies has contributed significantly to our understanding of exercise physiology and there is potential for major new discoveries. Researchers starting out in this field will have to ensure an appropriate study design to avoid, for example, statistically underpowered studies. Ethical concerns arise more from the applications of genetic research than from the research itself, which is assessed by ethical committees. Possible applications of genetic research are genetic performance tests or genetic tests to screen, for example, for increased risk of sudden death during sport. The concerns are that genetic performance testing could be performed on embryos and could be used to select embryos for transplantation or abortion. Screening for risk of sudden death may reduce deaths during sporting events but those that receive a positive diagnosis may suffer severe psychological consequences. Equally, it will be almost impossible to keep a positive diagnosis confidential if the individual tested is an elite athlete.     

遗传学课程教学设计与构想

遗传学是高职教育生物专业的一门重要课程,根据教学现状和学生特点,探讨遗传学课程教学设计的有益尝试。教学中通过理论课程与实验课程教学内容的改革与调整,提高了学生对遗传学基本原理的理解和掌握,提高了学生分析、解决问题的能力,增强了学生实验能力和学习积极性,提高了遗传学教学质量和教学效率。     

医学遗传学“课程思政”在研究生教学中的实践与探索

“课程思政”是指以构建全员、全程、全课程育人格局的形式将各类课程与思想政治理论课同向同行,形成协同效应,把“立德树人”作为教育的根本任务的一种综合教育理念。医学遗传学是医学与遗传学相结合的一门重要的基础医学课程。郑州大学基础医学院医学遗传与细胞生物学系教学团队悉心设计了研究生医学遗传学“课程思政”方案,以典型的遗传学案例为切入点,通过讲述典型的遗传学案例,将医学人文精神、科学精神贯穿到整个课程中,培养医学研究生为人类解除病痛的职业素养,传承大医精诚的医学精神,同时提升他们合作共赢、交流创新、挑战权威、科研诚信的思维能力。     

Etiology of reading difficulties as a function of gender and severity

To test the hypothesis that the etiology of reading difficulties may differ for males and females in more severely impaired samples, reading performance data from monozygotic (MZ), same-sex dizygotic (DZ_ss), and opposite-sex dizygotic (DZ_os) twin pairs were analyzed using a model-fitting implementation of the DeFries-Fulker (DF) model (Purcell & Sham, 2003, Behavior genetics, 33, 271–278). Five non-independent samples were selected using cut-offs of −1 (N = 737 pairs), −1.5 (N = 654), −2 (N = 468), −2.5 (N = 335), and −3 (N = 198) standard deviations (s) below the mean composite reading score of control twins. Male/female gender ratios for children with reading difficulties were significantly higher than 1.0 for all five samples and increased as a function of severity (viz., 1.15, 1.17, 1.40, 1.61, and 1.88, respectively). When the DF model was fit to the data, estimates of heritability (h _g²) and shared environmental influences (c _g²) were not significantly different for males and females in any of the groups. Consequently, the most parsimonious model that provided a good fit to the data at all five levels of severity equated the heritabilities and shared environmental influences for males and females, and fixed the DZ_os coefficient of genetic relatedness at 0.5. Thus, these results provide no evidence for a differential etiology of reading difficulties as a function of gender in more severely impaired samples, and suggest that the same genetic and environmental influences contribute to reading difficulties in males and females, irrespective of severity.