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Blood, 15 August 2005, Vol. 106, No. 4, pp. 1210-1214. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on May 3, 2005; DOI 10.1182/blood-2004-12-4863. This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 2004-12-4863v1 106/4/1210    most recent Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Rights and Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Mahaney, M. C Articles by Platt, O. S Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Mahaney, M. C Articles by Platt, O. S Social Bookmarking                   What's this?  Previous Article  |  Next Article  Submitted December 22, 2004 Accepted March 11, 2005 Genetic influences on peripheral blood cell counts: a study in baboons Michael C Mahaney, Carlo Brugnara, Loren R Lease, and Orah S Platt* Department of Genetics, Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, San Antonio, TX, USA; Southwest National Primate Research Center, San Antonio, TX, USA Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA Department of Genetics, Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, San Antonio, TX, USA * Corresponding author; email: orah.platt{at}childrens.harvard.edu. Inter-person differences in peripheral blood cell counts in healthy individuals result from genetic and environmental influences. We used multivariate genetic analyses to assess the relative impact of genes and environment on baseline blood cell counts and indices using a pedigreed colony of baboons, an animal with well documented analogies to human blood physiology. After accounting for age, sex, and weight, we found that genetic influences explain a significant proportion of the remaining variability, ranging from a low of 13.7% for mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) to a high of 72.4% for red blood cell number (RBC). 38.5% of the variation in baseline white blood cell count (WBC), a characteristic that correlates with mortality in both the general human population and clinically defined subgroups such as individuals with sickle cell disease, is influenced by genes. We examined the interaction between pairs of traits and identified those that share common genetic influences (pleiotropy). We unexpectedly observed that the same gene or group of genes influences both WBC and mean platelet volume (MPV). We anticipate that this approach will ultimately lead to discovery of novel insights into the biology of related traits, and ultimately identify important genes that affect hematopoiesis. CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this? This article has been cited by other articles: N. Soranzo, A. Rendon, C. Gieger, C. I. Jones, N. A. Watkins, S. Menzel, A. Doring, J. Stephens, H. Prokisch, W. Erber, et al. A novel variant on chromosome 7q22.3 associated with mean platelet volume, counts, and function Blood, April 16, 2009; 113(16): 3831 - 3837. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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