In this three-part series, I am introducing a brief history and phenotype of Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome. Subsequently, I will survey initial hypotheses about Tourette’s heritability, and twin and family studies. — Table of Contents: Introduction Initial Genetic Hypotheses Twin Studies Family Studies Conclusion Abbreviations Bibliography 1. Introduction Tourette Syndrome (TS) neurodevelopmental disorder affecting primarily children and adolescents, with 0.3–1.0% lifetime prevalence, significantly affecting their quality of life and in some cases causing a life-long disability (Elstner et al., 2001). …

2020s will be marked by COVID19. This pandemic’s consequences will shake the very foundations of today’s society. World as we know it ended in December of 2019. — On October 25th, 2019, the New York Times a report on the termination of the funding to the PREDICT program. The program, ran by the US Agency for International Development, was a part of the Emerging Pandemic Threats program, focusing on the detection and discovery of zoonotic diseases. During their…

Maybe biology is not as set in stone as we are led to believe. — Defining the major misconceptions in any given field of science is often more difficult than it seems, particularly when it comes to getting down to the core of common misconceptions. …

There are numerous reasons a study published in a peer-reviewed journal might get retracted. Anything from obvious scientific misconduct (data fabrication) to an honest mistake, redundancy, plagiarism, or unethical research may warrant a retraction. In 2018, there have been over 1300 retractions across a wide variety of journals and scientific disciplines. Here are my top 12 in biological sciences in 2018, by month.

Out of curiosity (and boredom), I have collected data on presidential election votes and associated them with data on various types of mortality rates, sexually transmitted diseases, immunization rates, criminal activity, and education scores. — Please bear in mind that these graphs and summaries represent a rather simplistic statistical analysis, and linear regressions with a single independent variable usually do not adequately explain the dependent variable. But, since it’s 3AM and I have consumed too much coffee to be able to fall asleep — let’s…

Don’t get me wrong, as a Ph.D. student in Genetics and Genomics program, my lab life without CRISPR would probably be orders of magnitude more difficult. …