Posts

Image
Amish Mutation Protects Against Diabetes and May Extend Life Anahad O'Connor In a rural part of Indiana, Amish people have a rare genetic mutation that protects them from getting Type 2 diabetes which has extended their life spans. Researchers say that studying this mutation could lead to new therapies for chronic diseases and they are planning a follow up trial that will recreate the study and see its affect on obese people with insulin resistance.  The mutation affects a protein called plasminogen activator inhibitor-1, or PAI-1 that is known for promoting blood clotting. 5% of the community carries the mutation and causes them to produce unusually low levels of PAI-1.  Dr. Vaughan studied the population with low levels of this protein and found that Amish carriers of the mutation live on average to age 85 and about 10 years longer than their peers. And the Amish that did not have the mutation had about 7% with Type 2 diabetes, but for carriers, the rate was 0% and they h
Post a Comment
Read more
Image
Australia's Endangered Quolls Get Genetic Boost From Scientists Brittany Hope Flamik Quolls are nocturnal marsupials that once had roamed all of Northern Australia. Starting in the  1900s their populations have drastically decreased and in parts of  Cape York in northeastern Australia, the quolls were completely wiped out and have been endangered since 2005. The reason for this is their diet consists of cane toads which are an invasive and poisonous species. In one area of Queensland, it was noticed that some quolls did not have an appetite for the poisonous toads and the secret to their success was a gene that made them averse to eating toads.  In 2016, the University of Melbourne ecologists began breeding the hybrid offspring that inherited the survival gene. They call this technique "targeted gene flow" and believe that they can fast-track evolution and even use this technique to help other endangered species like the corals of the Great Barrier Reef. Although c
Post a Comment
Read more
Image
Why Progressives Should Embrace the Genetics of Education  Kathryn Paige Harden  Since the 1960s, white Americans without a college degree are dying from alcholism, overdoses, or even suicides. College education is proven to produce a better lifestyle for not only yourself, but to provide for your family. New research has now found that college graduation is partly the outcome of a "genetic lottery."  A study in Nature Genetics analyzed genes of a million people with European ancestry and found thousands of DNA variants that are correlated with educational attainment, called a polygenic score. "The genetic disparity in college completion is as big as the disparity between rich and poor students in America" (Harden, 2018). However, there is not much data on racial disparities in education and they have not been able to predict educational outcomes based on race. This topic can be confused with the negativity surrounding eugenics, but it is not to be mistaken t
Post a Comment
Read more