Archive for 'Genetics' Category

The Price of Altruism

A week ago I reviewed The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness. As I noted in the review, many individuals who are of interest to the core readership of this weblog make significant appearances in The Price of Altruism, John Maynard Smith and W. D. Hamilton most prominently. [...]

Is the “missing heritability” right under our noses?

One of the major criticisms leveled against genome-wide association studies for complex diseases is that they have identified loci which account for a relatively small proportion of the variance in most traits. The difference between this small proportion of variance explained by known loci and the (generally large) total amount of variance known to be [...]

Jews and genetics

Over at Discover Blogs I have a very long post up on Jews & Genetics. In particular the recent paper in AJHG. One observation I have to make about Jewish genetics: when it comes to PCA plots which illustrate the relationship of Jews, in particular Ashkenazi Jews, to other populations I’ve noticed that two different [...]

Grizzly-Polar bear hybrids in the wild

Timely, Pizzly Bears: Scientists confirmed last week that a bear shot by an Inuvialuit hunter in the Northwest Territories is a second-generation grizzly-polar bear hybrid—a “pizzly” or “grolar” bear. Not that big of a deal. It is likely that polar bears are simply a recent derived variant of brown bear. The main issue not noted [...]

Who are the living Neandertals?

I guess now we kind of know.

The importance of rare variants in common diseases

In a couple recent posts (and, I remember thanks to google, at least one very old–in internet years–post), I’ve pushed back against criticisms of genome-wide association studies using SNP genotyping arrays. This is despite the fact that I agree it’s clear that rare variants contribute to common diseases, and that sequencing technologies are eventually going [...]

Nature, nurture and noise

Mirrored from http://wiringthebrain.blogspot.com The question of what makes each of us the persons we are has occupied philosophers, writers and daydreamers for millennia but has been open to scientific inquiry over a far shorter time. The answer clearly lies in the brain and, somehow, in how it is “wired” (whether that refers to the amount [...]

Differences in swine flu response by population

Remember when there was talk about how SARS might disproportionately hit Chinese in comparison to other populations? Here’s a new paper on how Swine Flu may progress in different populations, Clinical Findings and Demographic Factors Associated With ICU Admission in Utah Due to Novel 2009 Influenza A(H1N1) Infection: The ICU cohort of 47 influenza patients [...]

Evolutionary fitness & nutrition

Russ Roberts recently had a discussion on Econtalk with Arthur de Vany. A lot of it covered baseball and social science, but he also spent a lot of time on “evolutionary fitness” (see the website at the link). I agree with a lot of what he had to say, but felt that some of his [...]

Natural selection and recombination

Razib has a nice discussion of an interesting observation just published in PLoS Genetics– that there is a negative correlation between recombination rate in the human genome and population differentiation. This observation, along with the complementary observations of correlations between nucleotide diversity and recombination and between nucleotide diversity and density of functional elements, form part [...]

Helicobacter pylori strains among Iranians

Ethnic and Geographic Differentiation of Helicobacter pylori within Iran: The bacterium Helicobacter pylori colonizes the human stomach, with individual infections persisting for decades. The spread of the bacterium has been shown to reflect both ancient and recent human migrations. We have sequenced housekeeping genes from H. pylori isolated from 147 Iranians with well-characterized geographical and [...]

There are no common disorders (just extremes of quantitative traits)

On the basis of recent Genome-wide association research, a review by Plomin et al. (2009) predicts that, in line with R.A. Fisher’s reconciliation of Mendelian inheritance and quantitative genetics, investigations “on polygenic liabilities will eventually lead to a focus on quantitative dimensions rather than qualitative disorders”. Basically, they are proposing a shift in thinking: moving [...]

Heterozygote advantage in resistance to tuberculosis

The lta4h Locus Modulates Susceptibility to Mycobacterial Infection in Zebrafish and Humans: Exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis produces varied early outcomes, ranging from resistance to infection to progressive disease. Here we report results from a forward genetic screen in zebrafish larvae that identify multiple mutant classes with distinct patterns of innate susceptibility to Mycobacterium marinum. A [...]

Creative destruction in the personal genomics industry?

I’m hearing about rumblings at 23andMe, and not in a good way. The company made a big splash a few years ago, and came highly recommended by friends (e.g., “They know their science, and have a bottomless pool of money”). This story at BNET got my attention though, and confirmed what many have been hinting [...]

Eating like your ancestors

The ideas of gene-culture coevolution have percolated all the way to the foodie-sphere, over at Epi-Log at Epicurious, The Health Trend of the Future: The Ethnic-Group Diet?: So, maybe at some point in the future, a visit to the doctor will involve a full genetic workup followed by a prescribed diet tailored to our individual [...]