Monthly Archives: February 2018

With publications of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) comprising increasingly larger cohorts, it has become clear that virtually all multifactorial traits (e.g. height, body mass index, type-2 diabetes, asthma, cancer, autism spectrum disorder) must reflect hundreds if not thousands of genes, … Continue reading →

The standard approach in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), a topic that is often shared in these GEITP pages, is to analyze one single trait at a time. However, such an approach does not really achieve all the information contained in … Continue reading →

This article, appearing earlier this week in UPI.com, further underscores Alex Berezow’s article “Is Journalism Destroying Science” that I shared among all of GEITP several days ago. In other words, we now see hype and exaggeration being practiced everwhere (newspapers, … Continue reading →

The appearance of drug-resistant bacteria is just another example of evolution going on, which is happening every day. The organism senses environmental adversity (e.g. an antibiotic that is killing off everyone around them), so its response is to change its … Continue reading →

Sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) is a member of an ancient lineage that diverged from the vertebrate (animal with a backbone or spinal column) stem ~550 million years ago, give or take a few months. Accordingly, the lamprey has served as … Continue reading →

BATS are mammals that belong to the order Chiroptera (from the Latin prefix “chiro” meaning “hand”, and from the Greek word “ptera” which means “wings”) –– which refers to the pronounced elongation of finger digits that support the flying membrane). … Continue reading →

Is Journalism Destroying Science? By Alex Berezow — 8 February 2018 The war on science has at least three fronts. First, there is the widely reported political war on science, widely and erroneously believed to be waged exclusively by conservatives, … Continue reading →

Worldwide, colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common malignancy and develops through accumulation of colonic epithelial cell mutations that stimulate transition of normal mucosa to adenocarcinoma. About 5 percent of CRC occurs in individuals having inherited mutations. One such condition, familial … Continue reading →

Freshwater crayfish belong to the Order “decapod crustaceans”, which includes crabs, lobsters, prawns and shrimps. Complete genome sequences from these groups remain to be established. Currently, the only crustacean genomes available are those of the water flea (Daphnia pulex) and … Continue reading →

Predisposition to neuropsychiatric disease involves a complex, polygenic (involvement of many genes), pleiotropic (the same gene contributing to two or more seemingly unrelated traits) genetic architecture (characteristics of genetic variation that are responsible for heritable phenotypic variability; genetic architecture depends … Continue reading →