The Ed's Up #105
No, Scientists Have Not Found the ‘Gay Gene’
"So, ultimately, what we have is an underpowered fishing expedition that used inappropriate statistics and that snagged results which may be false positives. Epigenetics marks may well be involved in sexual orientation. But this study, despite its claims, does not prove that and, as designed, could not have." (Image: Michael Dalder)
What You Can Learn From Hunter-Gatherers' Sleeping Patterns
Here’s the story that people like to tell about the way we sleep: Back in the day, we got more of it. Our eyes would shut when it got dark. We’d wake up for a few hours during the night instead of snoozing for a single long block. And we’d nap during the day. Then—minor key!—modernity ruined everything. Our busy working lives put an end to afternoon naps, while lightbulbs, TV screens, and smartphones shortened our natural slumber and made it more continuous. All of this is wrong, according to Jerome Siegel at the University of California, Los Angeles. Much like the Paleo diet, it’s based on unsubstantiated assumptions about how humans used to live." (Image: Timothy Krause)
Searching for the Genes That Are Unique to Humans
"The human genome contains between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. Most of these pre-date our species by millions of years, and have counterparts in chimps, mice, flies, yeast, and even bacteria. But some of our genes are ours alone. They are human-specific innovations that arose within the last few million years. These genes might have contributed to the distinctive traits that make us human, but ironically, they are also very hard to study and often ignored. Many are missing from the reference human genome, which was supposedly “completed” in 2003." (Image: Mihoda)
Caffeine Makes For Busy Bees, Not Productive Ones
"A caffeinated bee is a busier bee. It’ll work harder to find food, and to communicate the location of said food to other bees. It will, however, misjudge the quality of the food it finds, and so make its colony less productive. The irony of writing about this as I sip an unwisely strong espresso at 10 pm is not lost on me." (Image: Anand Varma)
The Crowdsourcing Site That Wants to Pool Our Genomes
23andme now has around a million users, as do other similar companies like Ancestry.com. But these communities are largely separated from one another, a situation that frustrated Yaniv Erlich from the New York Genome Center and Columbia University. “Tens of millions of people will soon have access to their genomes,” he says. “Are we just going to let these data sit in silos, or can we partner with these large communities to enable some really large science? That’s why we developed DNA.LAND.” (Image: Stew Dean)
Taking the Uncertainty Out of Genetic Screening for Cancer Risk
"A genetic test for breast cancer might return with a “variant of unknown significance” or a VUS—mutations that, simply put, we know squat about. They could ramp up the odds of cancer, by some unknown degree. Or they could do nothing. For BRCA1, there are at least 350 VUS in total. And around 2 percent of women who go for the most widely used BRCA1 test, offered by Myriad Genetics, will see at least one of these unknown mutations. Their presence on a set of test results is a big lingering question mark, an admission of ignorance, a disquieting clinical shrug." (Image: Paul Hackett)
Turning Pigs Into Organ Donors
"That’s the goal of geneticist George Church, and last week he announced that his team at Harvard Medical School had succeeded. Currently, the demand for donor organs outstrips the supply by a factor of ten. Pigs could help to meet this demand, but their genomes contain hidden viruses called porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs), which could conceivably pop out of the transplanted organs and cause unexpected diseases. But I’m not sure whether this will make it easier to use pig organs for transplants." (Image: Ben Salter)
More good reads
- This is amazing. Can you evolve into a duck? From the good people at Clickhole.
- Famous astronomer Geoff Marcy sexually harassed many students for years. Important story from Azeen Ghorayshi, leading to actual change. Ross Andersen has a great follow-up: "Without genuine atonement, there is no going forward."
- The Tragic Neglect of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. By Olga Khazan
- This stone is a marker of one millionaire's personal vendetta against gravity
- Rose Eveleth has a list of what not to write about prosthetics.
- “It isn’t that he is too easy to see. It is that he doesn’t appear to see us at all.” Helen Macdonald on manufactured safari experiences.
- Jess Zimmerman on a con-man who reinvented himself as a reality TV magician.
- Very early modern human teeth found in China challenge our ideas about the date of ancient human migrations. By Ewen Callaway
- How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously. By Joe Fassler
More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science.
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And that's it! Thanks for reading.
-Ed