Monthly Archives: May 2019

No Support for Historical Candidate Gene-by-Interaction Hypotheses for Major Depression across Multiple Large Samples

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a VERY complex multifactorial trait in psychiatry — which is known to be “moderately” heritable. Based on identical vs fraternal twin studies, estimates of heritability are ~37%. With multifactorial traits (contributions to any phenotype by … Continue reading

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Spontaneously slow-cycling subpopulations of human cells originate from activation of stress-response pathways

This topic is an example of gene-environment interactions in which the environment is either “advantageous” or “adverse,” and genes (within each individual cell), especially those controlling cell cycle, respond to these environmental signals by speeding up, or slowing down the … Continue reading

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Starlink

For anyone who has not heard this incredible news — this is AMAZING….!!!! I had not heard one word about this. We’ll have thousands of low-orbit satellites (apparently in a string? Almost like having a ring around Earth, like Saturn … Continue reading

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SpaceX Launches 60 Starlink Internet Satellites into Orbit

This (article from the NYT) gives a whole new meaning to the children’s poem — “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, …………”   DwN SpaceX Launches 60 Starlink Internet Satellites into Orbit If the mission is successful, … Continue reading

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Transplanting gut bacteria alters depression-related behavior, brain inflammation in rats

This is an intriguing recent article from ScienceDaily.com Scientists have shown that transplanting gut bacteria — from a rat that is vulnerable to social stress, to a non-stressed rat — can cause vulnerable behavior in the recipient. The research reveals … Continue reading

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Rapid plant evolution is driven by interaction of pollination and herbivory

Probably most people don’t think of this, but angiosperms (flowering plants) “evolve over time” — in response a balance between how and which insects pollinate them, and herbivory (how and which animals eat them). “Pollination success” and “mating systems” are … Continue reading

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Asteroid data from the Hayabusa2 mission support collisional evolution of a pristine body

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa began its >2-billion-mile journey (in Dec 2014) to rendezvous and land on a rocky body with a diameter of no more than a kilometer; it arrived on Asteroid Ryugu in June 2018, and various studies are … Continue reading

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Genomic blueprint of the human gut microbiota — via multiple co-assembled metagenomes

The importance of our intestinal bacteria (“the gut microbiome“) has often been discussed in these GEITP pages. The extent to which our microbomes contribute to our inter-individual health, disease risk, and even response to drugs and environmental toxicants — is … Continue reading

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Gene expression imputation across multiple brain regions provides insights into schizophrenia risk

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been a common theme on these GEITP pages. Researchers select a phenotype (trait) and then screen the entire genome (looking at differences in single-nucleotide variants; SNVs) of hundreds or thousands of individuals (cohort) — looking … Continue reading

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“Missing heritability” (when the phenotype ‘height’ or ‘body mass index’ is studied) might have been found ???

“Heritability” is defined by “proportion of phenotypic variance (i.e. differences in any trait seen in a population) explained by genetic factors.” However, such estimates are uninformative with respect to the underlying genetic architecture [i.e. the underlying genetic basis of a … Continue reading

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