Tag : Molecules

Washington: Each individual has an individual chemical fingerprint. The composition of small molecules in the blood, such as fats or sugars, determines how our body reacts to external influences, which diseases we are susceptible to and how severe an illness will be. In an international collaboration with partners from Cambridge (UK), scientists from the Berlin Institute of Health at the Charite (BIH) have now discovered more than 300 regions in the genome that contribute to this individual chemical fingerprint. They have now published their results in Nature Medicine. Our body continuously processes thousands of small molecules to maintain our metabolism, and thus our health. Even small changes can cause illness and metabolism is as individual as the person. Scientists at BIH have now discovered rare and common changes in the genetic code that influence the personal chemical fingerprint and the individual disease profile. "With our study, we are finally illuminating the genetic control of our metabolism based on many hundreds of small metabolites, which has never been shown in such detail," says Professor Claudia Langenberg, Head of the Computational Medicine Department, adding: "This means we now better understand how and why genetic differences contribute to the development of diseases." Blood samples from 20,000 participants The scientists measured the number of small molecules, such as sugars, fats, or hormones, from blood samples of about 20,000 participants in two large population studies to investigate the influence of the genome. They identified regions in the genome that are linked to many, often very different, metabolites. "These metabolic 'hotspots' in the genome have helped us to better understand which genes are re ...