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Natural selection contributes to the myopia epidemic.

National science review | 2021

The prevalence of myopia, or nearsightedness, has skyrocketed in the past few decades, creating a public health crisis that is commonly attributed to lifestyle changes. Here we report an overall increase in the frequencies of myopia-associated mutant alleles over 25 years among participants of the UK Biobank. Although myopia itself appears to be selected against, many of the mutant alleles are associated with reproductive benefits, suggesting that reproduction-related selection inadvertently contributes to the myopia epidemic. We estimate that, in the UK alone, natural selection adds more than 100 000 myopia cases per generation, and argue that antagonistic pleiotropy be broadly considered in explaining the spreads of apparently disadvantageous phenotypes in humans and beyond.

Pubmed ID: 34532151 RIS Download

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Associated grants

  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MC_PC_17228
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MC_QA137853
  • Agency: NIGMS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 GM103232
  • Agency: NIGMS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R35 GM139484

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PLINK (tool)

RRID:SCR_001757

Open source whole genome association analysis toolset, designed to perform range of basic, large scale analyses in computationally efficient manner. Used for analysis of genotype/phenotype data. Through integration with gPLINK and Haploview, there is some support for subsequent visualization, annotation and storage of results. PLINK 1.9 is improved and second generation of the software.

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GWAS: Catalog of Published Genome-Wide Association Studies (tool)

RRID:SCR_012745

Catalog of published genome-wide association studies. Genome-wide set of genetic variants in different individuals to see if any variant is associated with trait and disease. Database of genome-wide association study (GWAS) publications including only those attempting to assay single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Publications are organized from most to least recent date of publication. Studies are identified through weekly PubMed literature searches, daily NIH-distributed compilations of news and media reports, and occasional comparisons with an existing database of GWAS literature (HuGE Navigator). Works with HANCESTRO ancestry representation.

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UK Biobank (tool)

RRID:SCR_012815

Biobank provides data collected at Assessment Center and via online questionnaires on participants aged 40-69 years recruited throughout United Kingdom and provides summary information to improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment of serious and life threatening illnesses.

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