The impact of the physical and chemical factors of atmospheric environment on men's environmental adaptabilities

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The study aims to clarify molecular basis of human skin color diversity and investigate environmental adaptability to ultraviolet irradiation in order to predict human health risk influenced by severe environments in the future.Two approaches to this research are considered as the research method. The one is to identify and measure physical/chemical factors of atmospheric environment (i.e., an ultraviolet ray and infrared rays like the solar radiation energy), which affects men with the technologies of remote sensing (RS). The other is to clarify the process of men's morphological/functional diversity appearance through a reaction, adaptation, etc. to the environment by the combination of those factors or one factor at a molecule, a gene, a cell, and an individual level.One hundred and twenty-two Caucasians living in Toledo, Ohio participated in this study. Their back and cheek were measured for melanin value for skin pigmentation index as a quantitative trait. Their buccal cells as sa … More mples were collected and used for DNA extraction. DNA was used for SNP genotyping with the technology of Masscode^<TM> system that involves the two-step PCR amplification and comprises a platform chemistry of cleavable mass spectrometry tags.Genotype and allele frequencies for 20 SNPs in 122 Caucasians were calculated with the data obtained from the SNP genotyping. To examine the contribution of non-random associations of SNP alleles at multiple loci (not necessarily on the same chromosome) to skin color variation (ie, low/high melanin content), linkage disequilibrium (LD) coefficients (D) were calculated between 20 SNPs. Linkage disequilibrium was analyzed by application of a _X^2 test ; statistical significance was set at 0.05. Combinations of SNP alleles at multiple loci under LD were jointly tested for association with low/high melanin by performing a x2 test of independence. Only data under the assumption of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium were used in the analysis.Our results show that SNP alleles at multiple loci associated with low and high melanin are not independent and indicate a high possibility of LD structure--despite the fact that the alleles are not on the same chromosome. Similar investigations must be performed with samples from non-Caucasians in order to confirm the association of LD with melanin content.Our overarching goal is to use remote sensing data to clarify interactions between atmospheric environments and SNP allele frequency and to investigate environmental adaptability to UV irradiation. The resulting data would help in predicting the impact of environmental changes such high UV exposure secondary to ozone depletion on health risk. Less