Does Consciousness Require a Subject? The Self, Agency & AI Limitations www.mindbodysolution.org/kevin-mitche... - really enjoyed this chat with Tevin Naidu! 😊 cc @cdj.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social
Interesting new multi-population aDNA selection scan from Colbran, Terhorst, Mathieson. Loci that are estimated to be under selection in one population also show enrichment in other populations, consistent with parallel or pre-split selection.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵
Blog post: A Missing Heritability Update. Three legs and other problems. I follow up on the recent excellent post on the subject by @sashagusevposts.bsky.social. ericturkheimer.substack.com/p/missing-he...
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀?
Do they even exist...?
Join @lucinauddin.bsky.social who will present, followed by discussion in the Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon.
Open to all.
Date: Dec 9, 12pm EST-US
Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... (you need a zoom account which is free)
#neuroskyence
Wow
'MHRA-led study reveals major inconsistencies in global microbiome research'
www.gov.uk/government/n...
'Species identification varied from 63% to 100% accuracy across different methods, meaning that some laboratories failed to detect a third of the bacterial species present in the sample'
We are seeking new PhD and MSc students interested in avian physiology and behaviour.
We are looking for new graduate students! Feel free to repost or pass along to prospective students
First, offering these techniques increasingly reinforces human reproduction and health as a private commodity, where individuals rely on private markets and pay high premiums to procreate and try to maximize health outcomes. The development of welfare states has been strongly oriented towards decommodification, which implies making citizens independent of market systems and has significantly benefited public health by offering social protection to all citizens. Offering genetic predictions for embryos to improve health outcomes latches onto a privatization logic that does exactly the opposite and hence erodes a system based on social equality and solidarity. It is true that the commodification of health has a long history in the United States, where most of these companies are situated, and that European states have also shifted towards a privatization of healthcare in the last few decades. Yet, there is still a difference between offering medical services in private markets and making the reproduction of human life a site of commodification. We would argue that selling embryo selection based on genetic testing is a form of privatization and commodification on steroids that takes preventive and private medicine to an extreme.
"We would argue that selling embryo selection based on genetic testing is a form of privatization and commodification on steroids that takes preventive and private medicine to an extreme."
Have read it! It's brilliant and neat paper! Congratulations and thanks to your group!
1/ 🚨New paper in Nature Genetics
Genetic factors are associated with the educational fields people study, from arts to engineering.
Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
FAQ: www.thehastingscenter.org/genomic-find...
First time on Bsky and first big announcement!
I am excited to announce that our new study explaining the missing heritability of many phenotypes using WGS data from ~347,000 UK Biobank participants has just been published in @Nature.
Our manuscript is here: www.nature.com/articles/s41....
Thrilled to share the second half of my PhD work here!
We show how data on expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) relates to the structure of gene regulatory networks (GRN). Much of the GRN / eQTL picture is unmapped, but what we do have says a lot… (1/)
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Heritability and target size underlie differences between trait architectures: examples for three traits. Top: Height (blue) and platelet crit (red) have the same heritability per site h2/L, but height has a much higher mutational target size L. This results in many more hits for height (1533) than for platelet crit (648) (2 left panels). However, the marginal distributions of effect sizes, MAFs, and z-scores of hits are nearly identical for the two traits (3 right panels). Middle: Height (blue) and FEV1 (gold) differ in h2/L, but have similar L. Consequently, the joint distribution of z-scores and MAFs of their hits are markedly different (2 left panels), as are the marginal distributions of hit effect sizes, MAFs and z-scores (right). Bottom: After scaling by their respective , and imposing the more stringent scaled significance threshold (corresponding to FEV1) for both traits, the joint distribution of z-scores and MAFs of their hits (2 left panels) and the corresponding marginal distributions (3 right panels) are highly similar.
Genetic architectures of #ComplexTraits vary widely. @yuvalsim.bsky.social @jkpritch.bsky.social @gs2747.bsky.social &co show these diffs arise from mutational target size & heritability per site; when controlled for, all tested traits have similar architectures @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/47mZXqT
I'm recruiting a postdoc for my group (based in beautiful Eugene, OR). Please get in touch if you're interested, esp if you'd like to chat at #ASHG25!
Proud of the latest edition of my free intro biostats book.
gitrepo: github.com/ybrandvain/b...
book: ybrandvain.github.io/biostats/
Not complete but at a good point to take a break, and I think its quite usable
dm me with comments , ideas etc
I've often wondered about what we should call organisms whose similarity might be due to acquired genetic material. It got a little complicated, but I made a stab at it here
Classifying Convergences in the Light of Horizontal Gene Transfer: Epaktovars and Xenotypes academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
A hearty Denisovan stew ripe with stories of mixing and more mixing, even with a third more ‘archaic’ hominid.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Sorry non-US friends--your science is still lovely but we're busy today starting the overthrow of a dictator
Why studies about reconstructing the past based on contemporary DNA makes me think of the streetlight effect
open.substack.com/pub/kostaska...
Great review on The Genetics of Human Handedness: Microtubules and Beyond www.cell.com/trends/genet... - handedness is such an interesting phenotype!
Well, it could just be the processes of development themselves. They're noisy. There's just a lot of stochasticity and sometimes that can push development down one pathway versus another. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.
"Social science genetics encompasses the longest causal chain in science: from DNA to human culture."
Some people call it a minefield. Others call it dangerous, even irresponsible. I call it the most promising field in life sciences.
My love letter to social science genetics: communities.springernature.com/posts/a-love...
I wrote about gene-gene interactions (epistasis) and the implications for heritability, trait definitions, natural selection, and therapeutic interventions. Biology is clearly full of causal interactions, so why don't we see them in the data? A 🧵:
Excited to share our latest manuscript, "Exposure accumulation drives age-dependent disease architectures and polygenic risk scores," led by Xilin Jiang: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
I am attempting an explainer thread for the first time here:
(I am usually too exhausted to post one)
Brilliant paper by Visscher et al.
Populations differ in traits/disease burden. Are these differences due to genetics?
Comparing single variants or polygenic scores between populations is biased due to environmental confounders correlated with the variants.
1/3
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
The AADR Visualizer: An ArcGIS Online Visualizer for ancient human DNA from the Allen Ancient DNA Resource academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
Check out these 5 Big Ideas (audio and text) from my new book, Elusive Cures. All centered around the question: What will it take to treat & cure the most formidable brain disorders?
Thank you @nextbigidea.bsky.social for selecting Elusive Cures to profile.
urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...
