Fourth Annual DNA Grantees' Workshop

Monday, June 23, 2003

MORNING SESSION

Question-and-Answer Session

MR. FRANK: Right now, if anyone has questions for anybody on the current panel, we would accept those questions. Yes?

DR. MENOTTI-RAYMOND: I have a question for Tom Parsons. (inaudible).

DR. PARSONS: We haven't observed any hotspots for heteroplasmy, so to speak. We have detected a couple of heteroplasmic positions around the genome, but what we have really been able to infer is relative evolutionary rates. That's another publication that's coming out, because this is a large body of genetic data and it turns out that there are true hotspots for population variation, and those would presumably also be relative hotspots for heteroplasmy, because the root cause of both of those things is mutation on the mitochondrial DNA molecule. However, we haven't seen anything that is ragingly heteroplasmic in all individuals or in many individuals. I don't know if that quite gets at what you were asking.

MR. FRANK: Time for a couple other questions if anybody has some.

(No response.)

If not, I think Lisa has some announcements.

DR. FORMAN: First I'd like to thank both panels this morning. Both panels have done an extraordinary job and I'm sorry if my flustering over not being able to show you my cartoons made it sound like these were the old guys. These are the tired guys, but clearly they're tired because they're giving us lots of tools that I think people are going to be very interested in using in the next—well, before the next time we go around. So again, thank you very much. A big round of applause.

I know I'm standing between you and lunch, but I'm brave. We will be going out to get our lunches. There's a buffet outside. As quickly as you can, please bring them back. We will be cutting lunch kind of tight here, and we do have a wonderful speaker for you. It is our own Acting Assistant Director, John Morgan. So quickly get your lunch and bring it back.