Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Someone Else Owns Your Genes

gene-patent

On April 15, in the case of The Association for Molecular Pathology vs. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the United States Supreme Court heard arguments questioning the legitimacy of patents on human genes. A genetic testing company, Myriad Genetics, has patent claims on two human genes that influence a person’s risk for breast cancer. Myriad is being sued by a conglomerate of physicians, scientists, and patients who argue that Myriad has illegitimately patented a product of nature. While the lawyers and Justices delved into the arcana of patent law and molecular biology, many of the rest of us were ... Read More

Genetic Evidence of Yoga’s Impact on the Immune System

yoga-immune-system

If we’re finished obsessing about yoga jeans, perhaps it’s time to think about yoga and genes. Newly published research from Norway suggests that a comprehensive yoga program rapidly produces internal changes on a genetic level. The results help explain the well-documented health benefits of this ancient practice. “These data suggest that previously reported (therapeutic) effects of yoga practices have an integral physiological component at the molecular level, which is initiated immediately during practice,” writes a research team led by Fahri Saatcioglu of the University of ... Read More

Out of Their Shell, Are Turtles More Like Birds or Lizards?

The turtle’s family tree has always been a bit of a mystery. “Turtles have a lot of unique morphological characters,” explains Nick Crawford, a post-graduate biology researcher at Boston University. “Basically, having a shell makes the rest of you look really different from your closest relatives.” Scientists looking at the turtle’s muscles and bones tend to think that they belong next to snakes and lizards. But scientists doing molecular analysis have placed their bets with turtles and birds. A recent paper in the journal Biology Letters hopes to put the issue to rest. By ... Read More

Building a Better Banana

Banana

For the last nine years, James Dale has been working to build a better banana. But his aim was not to make the fruit sweeter or easier to peel. The director of the center for tropical crops and biocommodities at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology has been tweaking the banana’s genes to transform it from a humble fruit into an incognito lifesaver. Dale has been working to make the food staple a better source of vitamin A and iron. If he can pull it off at scale, Dale will have engineered a sustainable solution to a major global health problem. What is called micronutrient ... Read More

Charting Genomes: Old Hairs Create New Headaches

Charting Genomes: Old Hairs Create New Headaches

Nearly a century ago in the outback of southwestern Australia, an eminent English anthropologist snipped off a dreadlock from an Aborigine at a fuel stop along the just-built transcontinental railroad. The 20 red to brown hairs in that clay-encrusted clump now have produced a genetic profile that researchers say defines how some of the first modern humans populated the world. The ancient DNA links Aborigines to one of the earliest groups of Homo sapiens, a group that had left Africa about 70,000 years ago, then lived in the Middle East before spreading east. A Danish-led team reports ... Read More

Can PTSD Become Hereditary?

Last week, I wrote that extreme stress can shrink certain parts of the brain, namely the hippocampus, and that the shrinkage helps to explain flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. But post-traumatic stress is a strange, mutable disorder with a confusing variety of symptoms and almost as many physical seats. Not everyone suffers from it. In fact, most people can survive serious trauma without crippling aftereffects. But the aftereffects in the others are real, and they may be inherited. The hippocampus is one seat of the problem, but scientists have also noticed ... Read More

Humankind’s Ascent Took Path of Yeast Resistance

Once upon a time there were no farms. People ate fruit off the vine and killed animals as they ran. They roasted things when it suited them but just as often ate them raw. The world was like this for thousands of years, a place of arrows and nuts where everything that was necessary could be found. One might imagine many reasons for giving up on those old, superficially idyllic, ways. Perhaps it was hunger, that ultimate mother of invention, or maybe it was just invention itself, unmotivated by need. But these are not the only options. Solomon H. Katz at the University of Pennsylvania thinks ... Read More

Being Frugal May Be More Genetic Than Learned

Shopping at garage sales, collecting soap slivers and other dollar-stretching habits — often derided as neurotic obsessions of the frugal mind — can now be blamed on the thrifty ways of a long-forgotten ancestor. Genetics, researchers say, has a far greater effect on consumer behavior than once thought. In a study of identical twins, which was published in the April edition of Journal of Consumer Research, marketing professors Itamar Simonson of Stanford University and Aner Sela of the University of Florida report that individual consumer preferences — for such products as chocolate, ... Read More

The Marijuana and Schizophrenia Conundrum

For years it's been a classic chicken-or-egg riddle: Does smoking marijuana lead to schizophrenia, or are those with schizophrenia who use cannabis simply seeking the calming effects of the drug? Researchers have suspected a link since the 1960s, and study after study has hinted that use of marijuana may trigger schizophrenia, a serious mental illness that affects one in 100 people. Recent studies, however, provide evidence strong enough to give public health officials — not to mention parents and educators — pause, especially as legalization efforts pick up steam. The latest to ... Read More

DNA Meets the Distribution Channel

There are few areas of science sexier than personalized medicine. The predictive potential of diving deep into our DNA has been featured everywhere from GQ and Oprah to The New York Times Magazine. Young adults hold "spit parties" to gather saliva samples for genetic analysis, while a gray-haired Alan Alda does much the same thing by expectorating and narrating during a public television special. Meanwhile, Dr. Francis S. Collins, the man who directed the sequencing of the human genome, was recently appointed director of the National Institutes of Health. At the other extreme of the ... Read More