Posts Tagged ‘carlzimmer’

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Ancient Viruses Are Buried in Your DNA

October 28, 2017

QT{{”
“Early on, the cells in an embryo can turn into any tissue. As these stem cells divide, they can lose this flexibility, committing to becoming one kind of cell or another. After that, cells typically shut down their viral genes.
Viral proteins appear to help keep stem cells from losing this potential. …
Viruses might have exploited embryos to make more copies of
themselves. By keeping their hosts as stem cells for longer, the viruses were able to invade more parts of the embryo’s body.” “}}

Ancient Viruses Are Buried in Your DNA, by @CarlZimmer
https://www.NYTimes.com/2017/10/04/science/ancient-viruses-dna-genome.html Nice #intuition on why they may promote the stem-cell state

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Scientists are cracking the code of when genetic variants matter

April 2, 2017

Cracking the code of when #genetic variants matter, by @CarlZimmer https://www.StatNews.com/2016/08/17/genetic-variants-ex-ac-sequence/ Underscores need for realistic guidelines on risk

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The Man Who Kicked Off the Biotech Revolution – Issue 44: Luck – Nautilus

January 30, 2017

The Man Who Kicked Off…#Biotech by @CarlZimmer
http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/the-man-who-kicked-off-the-biotech-revolution H Smith for discovering restriction enzymes + a history of the term

QT:{{”
“Trying to make sense of the failure, Wilcox suggested to Smith that the bacteria were destroying the viral DNA. He based his suggestion on a hypothesis proposed a few years earlier by Werner Arber, a microbiologist at the University of Geneva. Arber speculated that enzymes could restrict the growth of viruses by chopping up their DNA, and dubbed these hypothetical molecules “restriction enzymes.”” “}}

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Scientists are cracking the code of when genetic variants matter

January 12, 2017

https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/17/genetic-variants-ex-ac-sequence/

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You’re an Adult. Your Brain, Not So Much.

December 26, 2016

Your an adult. Your brain, not so much by @CarlZimmer
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/science/youre-an-adult-your-brain-not-so-much.html Non-obvious ethical implications of developmental neuroscience

QT:{{”
“The human brain reaches its adult volume by age 10, but the neurons that make it up continue to change for years after that. The connections between neighboring neurons get pruned back, as new links emerge between more widely separated areas of the brain.

Eventually this reshaping slows, a sign that the brain is maturing. But it happens at different rates in different parts of the brain.

The pruning in the occipital lobe, at the back of the brain, tapers off by age 20. In the frontal lobe, in the front of the brain, new links are still forming at age 30, if not beyond.

“It challenges the notion of what ‘done’ really means,” Dr. Somerville said.

As the anatomy of the brain changes, its activity changes as well. In a child’s brain, neighboring regions tend to work together. By adulthood, distant regions start acting in concert. Neuroscientists have speculated that this long-distance harmony lets the adult brain work more efficiently and process more information.”
“}}

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Scientists are assembling a new picture of humanity

December 4, 2016

Assembling a new picture of humanity by @CarlZimmer
https://www.statnews.com/2016/10/07/dna-genome-sequencing-new-maps/ 1 graph to represent everyone, counterpoint to #personalgenomes

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