This dissertation examines how the rise of a genetic Cameroonian diaspora in the United States through genetic genealogy has become crucial to managing and transforming postcolonial sovereignty in Cameroon over the past decade. In 2010, 17 African countries celebrated 50 years of independence. Cameroon distinguished itself by marking the anniversary by inviting 54 DNA-identified African Americans of Cameroonian ancestry back “home.” This first genetic reconnection program would not be the last — neither in Cameroon nor in West Africa more broadly. As genetic ancestry takes on a new life beyond the American genetic genealogy industry, this project examines the ongoing problem of racialization through this technology as a problem of biocapital at a global scale. I consider the ways that genetic ancestry has catalyzed new modes of belonging beyond individualistic desires of American test-takers. The emergence of a genetic Cameroonian diaspora has enabled Cameroonians to repurpose the ambivalent relationship between the African American diaspora and Africa to recoup African Americans as a form of social capital. Through multi-scalar processes of disalienation, I argue that genetic reconnection programs create an ethic of sharing ancestry based on reciprocity. African Americans’ ability to be reunited with their genetically-identified ancestral homeland is authorized insofar as their return can be repurposed to simultaneously to reclaim the promise of independence that the postcolonial nation-building project has been unable to provide by ensuring those who share ancestry are invested in being dependable on and for each other. As this technology of the past is reoriented toward the future in Cameroon, the social, political, and economic pressures that genetic reconnection programs attempt to manage and that simultaneously set the limit for whether and how genetic reconnection’s utopian potential can come to fruition.

By conducting nearly two years of multi-sited ethnographic research and archival research in Washington, D.C. and Cameroon from 2010 to 2018, I use this dissertation to intervene in critical discussions on the 21st century biologization of race through insights drawn from feminist kinship studies, biological citizenship, and historical repair. In the postgenomic era, where ethics is the currency driving the value of genetic information, I showcase how the politics of life itself has less to do with genetic determinism than how life chances are being differentially defined so as to make DNA a final frontier for a viable life from the scale of the nation-state to intimate kin. Rather than reifying a genetically-determined ancestry in Africa, genetic reconnection between Cameroonians and African Americans is inextricably linked to a reconfiguration of postcolonial sovereignty where the racialized prospects of life are opened up anew. This, however, requires attention to Africa as a contemporary space where scientific knowledge production processes unfold, rather than an ahistorical place either captured by science or where science is applied. Genetic reconnection not only links the related, but distinct, racialized histories of colonialism and slavery binding African Americans and Cameroonians. It also illustrates how these histories are being reassembled under 21st century modes of empire that racialize in ways that are neither undermined nor replicated entirely by DNA alone.

• Approximately two million hospital readmissions occur annually and cost Medicare nearly $26 billion dollars.

• The Neuro R 2 score was designed by the Mayo Clinic to predict the risk of readmission within 30 days of recent hospitalization in patients with neurological disorders and based on common clinical characteristics.

• It remains unknown whether the prediction model is broadly applicable, particularly when incorporating patient characteristics strongly associated with healthcare disparities.

Identification of an Enamelin Defect Resulting in Amelogenesis Imperfecta

Jessica Claire Massie

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the genetic defect in a child, which resulted in Amelogenesis Imperfecta (AI) using saliva collected from a routine patient visit.

Methods: A 10-year old female presented to the UCSF Pediatric Dental Clinic with sensitivity and esthetic concerns. She and her 59-year old father, both indicated a history significant for AI. Saliva was collected from the proband, her affected father, and her unaffected mother using the Oragene DNA collection kit from which their DNA was manually purified. A family history was taken to identify the mode of inheritance and enamelin (ENAM) was chosen as a candidate gene. Primer sets were generated to amplify the entire ENAM gene, and amplified products were sequenced.

Results: The family pedigree revealed an autosomal dominant inheritance pattern for AI. A clinical exam revealed a mixed dentition with generalized rough, pitted, yellow-brown enamel consistent with the hypoplastic phenotype reported for AI resulting from a defect in the enamel matrix protein, enamelin. PCR amplification of genomic DNA revealed a novel mutation in exon 7, at g.10602C>G that replaces Pro with Arg, which would alter the protein structure.

Conclusion: When patients present with inherited tooth defects, the dentist's role is to describe the phenotype and obtain a family pedigree of the inheritance pattern. Additionally, collecting a patient's saliva is a simple, painless procedure, which can be used for DNA purification, mutational analysis, and diagnosis of inherited tooth defects such as AI.

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Clinical significance