The day after Thanksgiving is the most important holiday before Christmas. It’s our signal to start shopping for holiday gifts!

But what do you give someone who is crazy about genetics?

Well, my friend, you came to the right store, if you need a gift for any of the following reasons:

• The holidays! What better way to say Merry XX-Mas! (or Merry XY-Mas!)
• Birthdays and anniversaries, graduate fellowships, employment, promotions, new discoveries, grant approval, postdoctoral work and all the major accomplishments in life!
• Something for your boss; your boss’ boss; your professor; your department head and all the important people who can sign your papers!
• Something for your laboratory head, technicians, the statisticians and programmers, and everyone who makes your life easier.
• Something for your classroom, art walls, bare walls, bathroom walls? and other walls you want jazzed up!
• and don’t forget YOU. You deserve to have the best.

Genetics and Health Showroom has everything most of what you want (shameless promotion) for gift ideas of all occasion.

For starters, your own DNA in Portrait. Yup, submit a cheek swab and DNA 11 will send you a printed canvas of your genetic material. Check out a sampling from the Gift Guide.

Happy Black Friday!

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I appreciate each comment that you leave on on this blog and really would want to see a strong community for both health junkies, students and people needing medical/genetic issues/information.

For everyone to know they can trust this site to be a clean and welcoming place to get involve, I’m putting together a COMMENT POLICY that I will strictly enforce.

• I love to know what you think and so welcome your comments, ideas, inquiries and musings.
• Be respectful of everyone, which includes myself, other people and their/our comments. In this site, we can disagree and talk about our disagreements and dislikes, and I welcome differing opinions. HOWEVER, please do so in a respectful manner.
• No sexual, lewd, and vulgar comments, references and expletives are allowed. EVER.
• If you repeatedly use expletives or comments that are deemed offensive, abusive, include personal attacks, or in any way violate the comment policy, I may have to block you so that none of your comments appear without my approval, or completely ban you from the site.
• Please cite references (author, book/journal, ID, date) for any comment that is not originally yours.
• However, do not put URLs or email addresses in your comments. I may have to treat them as SPAM, even when they are legitimate comments. If you want to send a tip or a website you want us to check out, please email me at graceibay[at]b5media[dot]com.
• Spammy comments and adult websites go directly to the SPAM box. So don’t even try.
• I reserve the right to edit and delete comments as I see fit. If you are unsure why your comment was deleted or edited, please email.

We can all make Genetics and Health a great community!

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So we hack, snort, sneeze and feel awful until this prokaryote decides it has enough of us. There is no cure. We can treat the symptoms, sure, but we’re not fighting the virus. We’re simply "letting it run its course" and that really sucks, right? Here is man, the mighty Goliath, and this puny David of a virus swings at us and down we go, crying for our mommies.

The latest research found that it’s not the rhinovirus that causes the cold symptoms. Rather our immune response goes into "overdrive" because this viral infection. Great. The scientists believe the ideal treatment should "maintain body’s natural antiviral response while normalizing the inflammatory response."

Cool. Meantime, excuse me for the infrequent posting while my body goes into overdrive as the cold virus continues to taunt and bring havoc to my existence.

image: Wikimedia

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Austrian scientist found that mice who were fed for over 20 weeks with GM corn developed by Monsanto decreased their liter size around the third-fourth generation compared to the control group.

The Institute for Responsible Technology immediately issued a "moratorium" on the distribution of GM food products until their "safety are undeniably established". Monsanto responded to the news and statements made by Greenpeace about their products, and I quote:

The Greenpeace press statement is inconsistent with over a decade of reputable, peer-reviewed, scientific studies, including multi-generational studies, which demonstrate and confirm the safety of GM crops.

“These products have been proven to be safe. This report does not provide any basis to conclude otherwise,” said Jerry Hjelle, Ph.D., Vice President of Monsanto’s regulatory group.

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Man has an innate itch to find out where he came from, be it by evolution or ancestry. In a way it helps us connect with people from our past and gives us roots. So it’s no surprise that DNA testing for ancestry or population of origin has mushroomed in the past few years with the growth of direct-to-consumer companies.

Now, the American Society of Human Genetics is concerned about the implications of carrying out such tests without guidelines and oversight. The society presented a recommendation paper to the academe, and to the 30 companies involved in ancestral genetics testing.

Image credit: Newscom

Some of those concerns include accuracy of markers used in testing, the methods of interpreting results, the power of the tests, and that there is no quality assurance guarantee in the DTC ancestry industry. Another concern relates to the presence of diseases and other risk factors associated with one’s ancestry and race.

I’m sure there are other means to finding out one’s ancestry with more accuracy, and physical genealogy records may give better, more detailed clues. The ancestral family tree of Angelina Jolie? That was discovered when old Canadian family tree records were published. The report said they all share the same nose. Who knows… you may be related to someone famous too, if you look up old manuscripts, and you don’t need DNA testing for it too.

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I found a feature article about a teenager named Lizzie Tinney, living with Xeroderma Pigmentosa or XP. Lizzie is only 13 years old and yet she already had to undergo surgeries to remove skin cancer sores. Even while wearing protective clothing from head to tow, Lizzie still has to carry around a meter to measure how much UV light she receives.

"It’s way hard. Its way still hard because I love the sun," says Lizzie. "But now that I know that I have XP, I can just go out with my hood on and I go out and play."

Xeroderma Pigmentosa is a rare genetic disorder in which the skin is unable to repair the damage caused by ultraviolet radiation, such as such exposure. The skin becomes so sensitive to UV rays that it gets thin and pigmented. The DNA damage accumulates with age and is so irreversible that risk for skin cancer is 2000-fold.

To find out more about Xeroderma Pigmentosa, visit the Xeroderma Pigmentosum Society website.

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The theory outlines that genes from the father’s sperm are in an evolutionary tug-of-war with genes from the mother’s egg. Whichever becomes dominant tips brain development that direction. An excerpt from the NY Times -

A strong bias toward the father pushes a developing brain along the autistic spectrum, toward a fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of social development. A bias toward the mother moves the growing brain along what the researchers call the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity to mood, their own and others’. This, according to the theory, increases a child’s risk of developing schizophrenia later on, as well as mood problems like bipolar disorder and depression.

A support of the theory are the sister syndromes Angelman and Prader-Will. The Angelman syndrome is characterized by jerky movements, frequent laughing or smiling and an unusually happy disposition. The syndrome is caused by a deletion of genes on the maternally inherited chromosome 15. Contrast that to Prader-Willi syndrome, where individuals are placid, compliant and low-maintenance. The syndrome is caused by a deletion in the same region of a paternally inherited chromosome 15.

Image: Flickr

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This latest news must have been greeted with cautionary hope at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting in Philadelphia. According to the Scientist, a large-effect allele that provides protection against autism was found on chromosome 5 near the semaphorin 5A (SEMA5A) gene, which is involved in guiding neural axons during development. The same group also found two genes not previously linked to autism, one at the tip of chromosome 20’s short arm, and one at the end of chromosome 6’s long arm.

The researchers from Johns Hopkins University used the "the cleanest best set of SNP markers you can imagine" so presumably these results are accurate. Of course, as with most genetic studies, the findings have to be replicated and validated.

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This finding is significant on several fronts. It’s the first time that a cancer genome has been sequenced. The scientists took samples of both cancer and normal skin cells from the same woman, and sequenced the DNA on both samples. Previous to this, the focus was on select regions of the genome, called candidate regions, suspected of carrying genes that cause or contribute to cancer.

The study also found that 8 of the 10 mutations have never been suspected as contributing to the disease. The researchers found them on every cancer cell and none in the normal samples, which suggests that these mutations play as-yet unknown roles in skin cancer.

The research is focused on skin cancer, but scientists are enthusiastic about finding similar or the same genes in other types of cancers.

At her request, the woman’s identity is kept secret, but this is also the first time that a woman’s genome has been sequenced. Previous to her, only James Watson and Craig Venter’s DNA have been decoded. 

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