Genetics

PACE / State of CA / State of FL
In this month’s “Virtual Lecture,” Victor Karpyak, M.D., Ph.D., discusses the burden of alcohol use disorders (AUD) on society compared to other neuropsychiatric disorders and reviews the progress of biomarker discovery.

This is a 6-part series describing the products and clinical tools of a laboratory quality improvement project called Region 4 Stork, or R4S.

Dr. Guenzel, a fellow in Laboratory Genetics and Genomics at Mayo Clinic, is the recipient of this award for his publication “The critical role of psychosine in screening, diagnosis, and monitoring of Krabbe disease.”

With the rise of next generation sequencing (NGS) technology, multigene panel testing is expanding so rapidly that clinical practice is racing to keep pace. And questions within genetic tests have expanded along with it, making definitive answers more challenging to come by. Experts in the Genomics Laboratory in Mayo Clinic's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology work to explain this often misunderstood technology.

PACE / State of CA / State of FL
Originally presented January 14, 2021
This “Specialty Testing” webinar will discuss how hearing loss is diagnosed and how patient outcomes can be improved by genetic testing. Strategies for testing and confirming results will also be reviewed.

Developed with input from clinical specialists, the AudioloGene Hereditary Hearing Loss Panel offers the most comprehensive genetic assessment for hearing loss available today.

One of the biggest misunderstandings about genetic testing is a perception that once a variant is identified and analyzed thoroughly, using all the best tools available, it can be associated with a specific disease or condition. But many mutations are deemed “variants of unknown significance,” meaning there is no reported (or insufficient) evidence as to whether or not they cause disease.

In the last decade or so, genetic testing has evolved from single-gene Sanger based assays to much more complex next-generation sequencing (NGS) based assays. This incredible technology has facilitated the rapid and high-throughput evaluation of many genes (hundreds of thousands of DNA strands) all at once.

This week's featured chromosomal microarray test in focus is presented by William Sukov, M.D., a pathologist and cancer geneticist at Mayo Clinic. He discusses when this test should be used for patients with renal tumors.

Newborn screening panels that test for a variety of conditions are available in every state; however, test performance and response rate by each state are very different. Mayo Clinic's Biochemical Genetics Laboratory created the Collaborative Laboratory Integrated Reports tool to mitigate the national (and international) problem of false positives and to raise the bar on test performance.

Ann Moyer, M.D., Ph.D. gives an overview of this new test available through Mayo Clinic Laboratories. She discusses when this testing should be ordered, how this testing improves upon other testing approaches, and what clinical action can be taken due to the results of this testing.

Dietrich Matern, M.D., Ph.D., Division Chair of Laboratory Genetics in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology in Rochester, Minnesota, has been appointed as a new director on the board of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG).

Mayo Clinic's Center for Individualized Medicine (CIM) is nearing the finish line of the first stage of its unique RIGHT 10K study—an effort that doesn't involve running shoes but nevertheless is paving the way to prescribing medications matched to a person’s genetic code.