Image via Wikipedia just a pointer to: Genetic Future’s pointer to the recent article, “Family become first to have DNA sequenced for non-medical reasons“. The father suggests, “it will be ethically improper if you don’t have your children sequenced“. Early days.
Posts Tagged ‘DNA’
echoblog: Dad, Mom ‘n kids go all-in for full sequence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged DNA, Genetic testing, Genetics, genome sequencing, Personalized medicine on April 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Bigger genetic studies, more missing heritability
Posted in Chromosome structural variants, Intronic or repetitive sequences, Uncategorized, tagged Add new tag, Depression, Genetic testing, Mental disorder, Mental health, Twin, Biology, Genetics, DNA, Gene, Single-nucleotide polymorphism, Genome-wide association study, bipolardisorder, Twin study, Copy number variation, Genetic variation on April 5, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Twin studies have long suggested that genetic variation is a part of healthy and disordered mental life. The problem however – some 10 years now since the full genome sequence era began – has been finding the actual genes that account for this heritability. It sounds simple on paper – just collect lots of folks [...]
Photoperiod sensitive humans bloom much like spring flowers
Posted in Suprachiasmatic nucleus, tagged 23andMe, Add new tag, Brain, Depression, Mental health, Biology, DNA, Circadian rhythm, bipolardisorder, Seasonal affective disorder, Mood disorder, CLOCK on March 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by noahg. via Flickr If you’ve started to notice the arrival of spring blossoms, you may have wondered, “how do the blossoms know when its spring?“ Well, it turns out that its not the temperature, but rather, that plants sense the length of the day-light cycle in order to synchronize their own life cycles [...]
rs35753505 C-alleles make de l’Art Brut of the brain
Posted in Fusiform gyrus, Middle frontal gyrus, NRG1, middle occipital gyrus, tagged 23andMe, Add new tag, Art, Brain, Cognition, DNA, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Fusiform gyrus, Memory, Mental disorder, Mental health, Outsider art, Painting on March 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
According to wikipedia, “Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (July 31, 1901 – May 12, 1985) was one of the most famous French painters and sculptors of the second half of the 20th century.” “He coined the term Art Brut (meaning “raw art,” often times referred to as ‘outsider art’) for art produced by non-professionals working outside [...]
Genetic road signs for super-size coffee SUV drivers
Posted in ADORA2A, DRD2, Uncategorized, tagged 23andMe, Anxiety, Brain, Caffeine, Coffee, Cognition, Disorders, DNA, evolution, Genetic testing, Genetics, Mental disorder, Mental health, panic disorder, Personalized medicine, Psychoactive drug, Starbucks, Stress on March 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
If you’re a coffee drinker, you may have noticed the new super-sized portions available at Starbucks. On this note, it may be worth noting that caffeine is a potent psychoactive substance of which – too much – can turn your buzz into a full-blown panic disorder. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for psychiatry outlines a [...]
Thousands of genes together with thousands of resting-state nodes actually makes the genes-to-cognition problem LESS complex
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Biology, Brain, Cognition, connectome, default network, Development, DNA, Dopamine, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Genetics, Memory, Mental health, Prefrontal cortex, Psychology, resting state network on January 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
DON’T tell the grant funding agencies, but, in at least one way, the effort to relate genetic variation to individual differences in cognitive function is a totally intractable waste of money. Let’s say we ask a population of folks to perform a task – perhaps a word memory task – and then we use neuroimaging [...]
On the genetics of epigenetics (part un)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, Development, DNA, DNA methylation, Epigenetics, Gene, Gene expression, Genetic testing, histone, histone acetylation, Transcription factor, Twin on January 5, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Last year I dug a bit into the area of epigenetics (indexed here) and learned that the methylation (CH3) and acetylation (OCCH3) of genomic DNA & histones, respectively, can have dramatic effects on the structure of DNA and its accessibility to transcription factors – and hence – gene expression. Many of the papers I covered [...]
SLC1A1 SNPs as tiny deliveries on payment of big promise
Posted in SLC1A1, tagged 23andMe, economics, Genetic testing, Health care, medication, Mental disorder, Mental health, Personalized medicine, Biology, DNA, obsessive-compulsive, anti-psychotic, Glutamate, genetic association, clozapine, side-effect on December 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia In their forecast “The World in 2010” special issue, the Economist points to “The looming crisis in human genetics” wherein scientists will reluctantly acknowledge that, even with super-cheap genome sequencing tools, we may not soon understand how genetic variation contributes to complex illness. The argument is a valid one to be sure, [...]
Epigenetic loss of an insensitive period of cognitive development
Posted in Hippocampus, Hypothalamus, NRXB1, tagged Brain, Bruce McEwen, Chemical synapse, Development, DNA, DNA methylation, Epigenetics, Gene expression, Health, Neural development, Rett Syndrome, Rockefeller University, Stress, synapse, synaptic plasticity on December 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
We are all familiar with the notion that genes are NOT destiny and that the development of an individual’s mind and body occur in a manner that is sensitive to the environment (e.g. children who eat lots of healthy food grow bigger and stronger than those who have little or no access to food). In [...]
echoblog: Larry David makes genetics fun(ny)!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestry, DNA, genealogy, Genetic testing, Larry David, Science in Society on November 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image by roberthuffstutter via Flickr pointer to: Eye-on-DNA’s post of last nights episode of “Lopez Tonight” where Larry David shared the unveiling of his “Ancestry-by-DNA” results. He was good sport and it was great to see science as FUN. His results made me wonder if such ancestry tests are reliable though.
Development of autism vs. schizophrenia depends on a mere 600 kilobases of DNA on chromosome 16
Posted in Chromosome structural variants, tagged autism, Bipolar disorder, Brain, Development, DNA, Gene expression, Mental disorder, Mental health, Mood, schizophrenia on October 27, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Image via Wikipedia File this story under “the more you know, the more you don’t know” or simply under “WTF!“ The new paper, “Microduplications of 16p11.2 are associated with schizophrenia” [doi:10.1038/ng.474] reveals that a short stretch of DNA on chromosome 16p11.2 is – very rarely – duplicated and – more rarely – deleted. In an [...]
resourceblog: Understanding the molecular basis of cognitive and social impairment in the autism spectrum disorders
Posted in HDACs, MECP2, tagged autism, Autism spectrum, Development, DNA, DNA methylation, Epigenetics, Gene, Gene expression, HDAC, Mental disorder, Mental health, Mutation, Rett Syndrome on September 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia The cognitive and emotional impairments in the autism spectrum disorders can be difficult for parents and siblings to understand and cope with. Here are some graphics and videos that might assist in understanding how genetic mutations and epigenetic modifications can lead to various forms of social withdrawl commonly observed in the autism [...]
Epigenetic puppetmasters pull strings of cognitive development from a safe distance
Posted in HDACs, tagged autism, Biology, Development, DNA, Epigenetics, Gene, Gene expression, Genetics, Mental disorder, Mouse, Natural selection, Neural network, Rett Syndrome on September 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Image by eugene via Flickr The homunculus (argument) is a pesky problem in cognitive science – a little guy who might suddenly appear when you propose a mechanism for decision making, spontaneous action or forethought etc. – and would take credit for the origination of the neural impulse. While there are many mechanistic models of [...]
Mother Nature’s cruel love wrought in CRH promoter SNPs
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Biology, DNA, Gene, Genetics, Health, Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, Rhesus Macaque, Stress on September 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image by kodomut via Flickr For humans, there are few sights more heart-wrenching than an orphaned child (or any orphaned vertebrate for that matter). Isolated, cold, unprotected, vulnerable – what could the cold, hard calculus of natural selection – “red in tooth and claw” – possibly have to offer these poor, vulnerable unfortunates? So I [...]
White-matter correlates of gene penetrance reveal key brain circuits for dystonia
Posted in Cerebellum, Motor cortex, Thalamus, Thap1, Torsin A, tagged Biology, Development, Diffusion MRI, Disease, DNA, Dystonia, Gene, Genetics, Mental disorder, Mutation, White matter on August 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia Within the genetic news flow, there is often, and rightly so, much celebration when a gene for a disease is identified. This is indeed an important first step, but often, the slogging from that point to a treatment – and the many small breakthroughs along the way – can go unnoticed. One [...]
Human brain looks the other way while ancient genomes romp and play
Posted in Intronic or repetitive sequences, tagged Biology, DNA, DNA sequence, evolution, Gene, Genome, RNA, Stem cell, Transposon on August 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image by Kevin Steele via Flickr For more than a decade, we’ve known that at least 95% of the human genome is junk – or junque – if you’re offended by the thought that “you” emerged from a single cell whose genome is mostly a vast pile of crap – or crappe – if you [...]
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