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"Genetics Research Fiction"
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The Rosie project
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a \"wonderful\" husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. He sets up a project designed to find him the perfect wife, starting with a questionnaire that has to be adjusted a little as he goes along. She will be punctual and logical, most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver. Then he meets Rosie Jarman, who is everything he's not looking for in a wife. Rosie is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent, and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie, and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.
Book
Literary tastes are as heritable as other human phenotypes: Evidence from twins’ library borrowing
Social science research argues that differences in individuals’ literary and cultural tastes originate in social environments. Yet, it might be that these differences are partly associated with genetic differences between individuals. To address this possibility, we use nation-scale registry data on library borrowing among Danish twins ( N = 67,900) to assess the heritability of literary tastes. We measure literary tastes via borrowing of books of different genres (e.g., crime and biographical novels) and formats (physical, digital, and audio) and decompose the total variance in literary tastes into components attributable to shared genes (heritability), shared environments (social environment shared by siblings), and unique environments (social environments not shared by siblings). We find that genetic differences account for 45–70 percent of the total variance in literary tastes, shared environments account for almost none of the variance, and unique environments account for a moderate share. These results suggest that literary tastes are approximately as heritable as other human phenotypes (e.g., physical traits, cognition, and health). Moreover, heritability is higher for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups than for advantaged groups. Overall, our results suggest that research should consider the role of genetic differences in accounting for individual differences in literary and broader cultural tastes.
Journal Article
Fear nothing : a novel
While investigating the death of his mother who was a scientist, Chris Snow discovers she was engaged in secret experiments on a nearby military base, experiments which went wrong and which produced monsters. The next he knows, the monsters come visiting and they are not friendly.
Book
Seize the night
Poet Christopher Snow, a man who cannot stand daylight, teams up with his genetically engineered dog, Orson, to investigate the abduction of children in Moonlight Bay, California. The children are believed to be prisoners in an army base populated by intelligent animals, produced by scientific experiments. Snow and Orson penetrate the base to search for them. A sequel to Fear Nothing.
Eugenics and genetic screening in television medical dramas
Medical dramas offer unique insights into the way popular media makes sense of genetic technology and the ethics of its applications. In this paper we evaluate the contrasting depictions in television medical dramas of reproductive genetic screening and eugenics—two medical themes that some commentators see as closely related. By conducting a content analysis of 32 episodes of doctor shows featuring eugenic and/or genetic screening themes, we put the medical drama landscape in conversation with bioethics scholarship and mark a significant divergence between the two. While the academic literature has been parsing the possible relationship between genetic screening and eugenics for over 50 years, doctor shows tend to champion genetic screening as a powerful tool for promoting individual reproductive choice and criticise eugenics as a socially unjust infringement of reproductive freedom. In doing so, medical dramas mark a subtle but important moral distinction between the population-level implications of eugenics and the highly personal, emotional impact of genetic screening.
Journal Article
Differentiation of haploid and diploid fertilities in Gracilaria chilensis affect ploidy ratio
Background
Algal isomorphic biphasic life cycles alternate between free-living diploid (tetrasporophytes) and haploid (dioicious gametophytes) phases and the hypotheses explaining their maintenance are still debated. Classic models state that conditional differentiation between phases is required for the evolutionary stability of biphasic life cycles while other authors proposed that the uneven ploidy abundances observed in the field are explained by their cytological differences in spore production.
Results
We monitored the state and fate of individuals of the red seaweed
Gracilaria chilensis
periodically for 3 years in five intertidal pools from two sites with distinct conditions. We tested for differentiation in fecundity and spore survival among the gametophyte males and females (haploids) and the tetrasporophytes (diploids). We tested for the influence of fecundity and spore survival on the observed uneven ploidy abundances in recruits. The probability of a frond becoming fecund was size-dependent, highest for the haploid males and lowest for the haploid females, with the diploids displaying intermediate probabilities. Fecund diploids released more tetraspores than carpospores released by the haploid females. Spore survival depended on ploidy and on the local density of co-habiting adult fronds. An advantage of diploid over haploid germlings was observed at very low and very high adult fronds densities.
Conclusions
Neither spore production nor spore survival determined the highly variable ploidy ratio within
G. chilensis
recruits. This result invalidates the hypothesis of natural cytological differences in spore production as the only driver of uneven field ploidy abundances in this species. Diploid spores (carpospores) survived better than haploid spores (tetraspores), especially in locations and time periods that were associated with the occurrence of strong biotic and abiotic stressors. We hypothesise that carpospore survival is higher due to support by their haploid female progenitors passing-on nutrients and chemical compounds improving survival under stressful conditions.
Journal Article
Science fiction authors’ perspectives on human genetic engineering
Participants in the human gene editing debate often consider examples from science fiction but have rarely engaged directly with the science fiction community as stakeholders. To understand how science fiction authors develop and spread their views on gene editing, we created an online questionnaire that was answered by 78 authors, including 71 who had previously written about genetic engineering. When asked which ethical issues science fiction should explore, respondents most frequently mentioned affordability, new social divisions, consent and unforeseen safety risks. They rarely advocated exploring psychological effects or religious objections. When asked which works of fiction had influenced their perceptions of gene editing, the most frequent responses were the film Gattaca, the Star Trek franchise and the novels The Island of Doctor Moreau and Brave New World. Unlike other stakeholders, they rarely cited Frankenstein as an influence. This article examines several differences between bioethicists, the general public and science fiction authors, and discusses how this community’s involvement might benefit proponents and opponents of gene editing. It also provides an overview of works mentioned by our respondents that might serve as useful references in the debate.
Journal Article
Shiny New Beginnings: Reaching for Celestial Bodies in Romance and Research
This commentary explores a series of social fiction novels about relationships through the lens of ethnographic research. It amplifies the lessons about love and life from Dr. Patricia Leavy’s Celestial Bodies series focused around two people with complex trauma finding kinship and healing with one another after a chance meeting. In the process, it uplifts the rigor and uniqueness of Leavy’s methods in translating findings from many years of observational research with people in different kinds of relationships to the social fiction format whose name she coined herself. In journeying through a shared life with main protagonists Tess Lee and Jack Miller, readers discover a thriving ecology of connections and histories spanning multiple families and locations, and come away with deeper sociological understanding of how people shape and are shaped by their close relationships. Leavy’s stories center the idea of starting anew after trauma or conflict as a leitmotif in guiding readers through a diverse cast of characters and situations centering family, love, and teamwork.
Journal Article
DNA methyltransferase DNMT1 inhibits lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammatory response in human dental pulp cells involving the methylation changes of IL-6 and TRAF6
Dental pulp inflammation is a pathological process characterized by local lesions in dental pulp and the accumulation of inflammatory mediators. DNA methylation of cytosine residues is a key epigenetic modification that is essential for gene transcription, and plays pivotal roles in inflammatory reactions and immune responses. However, the function of cytosine DNA methylation in the innate immune defense against the inflammation of dental pulp is poorly understood. To investigate the effect of DNA methylation in inflamed dental pulp upon innate immune responses, expression levels of the DNA methyltransferases (DNMT1, DNMT3a and DNMT3b) in human dental pulp cells (hDPCs) after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation were evaluated by western blotting and reverse transcription-quantitative (RT-q) PCR. Only DNMT1 expression was decreased, while the transcription of inflammatory cytokines was increased. In the immune responses of LPS-induced hDPCs, the results of RT-qPCR and ELISA showed that DNMT1 knockdown promoted the production of the pro-inflammatory cytokines, interleukin (IL)-6 and IL-8. Western blotting demonstrated that DNMT1 knockdown increased the phosphorylation levels of IKKα/β and p38 in the NF-κB and MAPK signaling pathways, respectively. Furthermore, MeDIP and RT-qPCR analysis demonstrated that the 5-methylcytosine levels of the IL-6 and TNF receptor-associated factor 6 (TRAF6) promoters were significantly decreased in DNMT1-deficient hDPCs. Taken together, these results indicated that the expression of DNMT1 was decreased after LPS stimulation in hDPCs. DNMT1 depletion increased LPS-induced cytokine secretion, and activated NF-κB and MAPK signaling; these mechanisms may involve the decreased methylation levels of the IL-6 and TRAF6 gene promoters. This study emphasized the role of DNMT1-dependent DNA methylation on the inflammation of LPS-infected dental pulp and provides a new rationale for the investigation of the molecular mechanisms of inflamed dental pulps.
Journal Article