Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/gene expression

  • Depressing genes

    Can depression be a matter of genetic fate? by Siobhan Mitchell          [This post is the latest installment in our I Am Mental Illness series.] What if you could know if you were fated to be depressed? With the rise of personal genotyping services such as 23andme, almost can find out what their psychiatric ‘fate’ will be, but what do you do with this information once you have it? When I first considered testing myself for depressio…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

  • Biology Xplainer: Evolution and how it happens

    …he population will change over time. It will be adapted to its environment. It will evolve. Other mechanisms of evolution A pigeon depicted in Charles Darwin’sVariation of Animals and PlantsUnder Domestication, 1868. U.S.public domain image, via Wikimedia. When Darwin presented his idea of natural selection, he knew he had an audience to win over. He pointed out that people select features of organisms all the time and breed the…

    Authored by on January 29, 2012

  • Unicorns and Brainbows

    Brainbow is a mouse with a rainbow brain. By Jeffrey Perkel    A couple weeks ago I wrote about the beautiful world right under our noses, a world visible only under the microscope. The cover image for that post was this picture, a “‘Brainbow’ transgenic mouse hippocampus,” which placed 18th in the 2008 Nikon Small World Photomicroscopy contest. Brainbow technology also won the 2007 Olympus Bioscapes contest, with this be…

    Authored by on May 6, 2013

  • Literal XX Xplainer: How we can live with two X chromosomes

    …ression of one X chromosome in each cell makes each woman a lovely mosaic of genetic expression (although not true genetic mosaicism), varying from cell to cell in whether we use genes from X chromosome 1 or from X chromosome 2. Because these gene forms can differ between the two X chromosomes, we are simply less uniform in what our X chromosome genes do than are men. An exception is men who are XXY, who also shut down one of those X chromosomes…

    Authored by on June 27, 2012

  • Tiptoe through the thalamus…

    atively coarse resolution of diffusion MRI to the subcellular level of electron microscopy. That’s a story for another day, but if you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend Sebastian Seung’s eminently readable 2012 book, Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. Back to the Allen Institute datasets. When you click on ‘Mouse Connectivity’, the site presents you with an index of injection sites, 47 in all….

    Authored by on November 19, 2012

  • DoubleXpressions — Nazneen Rahman, Cancer Doctor and Jazz Singer

    …t last year I posted some of my songs online and had a really positive response, which was unexpected and lovely. I now have over 1000 followers and have been inspired to make an album which I am hoping to release sometime in 2013. My songs tend be stories about the complexities of life, with lush harmonies, quite a jazzy feel and I have a fondness for a slinky bass line. DXS:  Do you find that your scientific background informs your creativity,…

    Authored by on February 28, 2013

  • No gene is an island: What do scientists mean when they talk about environment and genes?

    Nope. This island does not represent your genes. (Source) When you read news stories about what affects a developing human in the womb or how cancer or obesity arises, you probably also see references to genes and environment. Some articles may focus on genes versus environment, or mention that something is “mostly” genetic or that the “environment” contributes to a disorder or trait in some way. What some people…

    Authored by on May 7, 2012

  • Mariette DiChristina

    …om, Scientific American Mind  and all newsstand special editions. She is the eighth person and first female to assume the top post in Scientific American‘s 166-year history. Under her leadership, the magazine received a 2011 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. A science journalist for more than 20 years, she first came to  Scientific American  in 2001 as its executive editor. She is an advisor for the Citizen Science Alliance…

    Authored by on February 17, 2012

  • UneXXpected Science: Does ADHD have benefits in certain environments?

    …nary terms. Modern society is just that—modern. This way of life has only been around for, at most, a few thousand years, which can be a blink of an eye for processes of natural selection. Dial back time about 10,000 years or 20,000 years, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any humans living in an environment anything remotely like a cubicle. Natural selection results from the interaction of genes and environment, and the “selection̶…

    Authored by on April 16, 2012

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …molecules themselves break down into a surprisingly small number of building blocks. The proteins that make up all of the living things on this planet and ensure their appropriate structure and smooth function consist of only 20 different kinds of building blocks. Nucleic acids, specifically DNA, are even more basic: only four different kinds of molecules provide the materials to build the countless different genetic codes that translate into all…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

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