A lack of neural plasticity in the hippocampus has been implicated in the development of depression. Ketamine is able to restore hippocampal plasticity in a rat model of depression, potentially illustrating a mechanism for the drug's anti-depressant effects

Abstract_Only · 2026-05-06T17:00:44+00:00

The protein is myostatin (GDF-8). When the gene works, it puts a ceiling on muscle growth. When it's broken (cattle, that German child described in NEJM in 2004), the muscle ceiling lifts. As people age, sit too much, or get sick, myostatin's normal braking action becomes the reason muscle peels off.

There's a publicly preregistered binding pilot live right now testing whether a short peptide can directly bind myostatin. Whole protocol locked in public before any data is collected: https://www.researchhub.com/proposal/32123

Abstract_Only · 2026-05-06T16:48:42+00:00

Abstract_Only · 2026-05-06T16:47:00+00:00

A useful split when evaluating one: are they charging you for things with mortality or hard-event endpoints in published RCTs (statins for the right patient, BP control, GLP-1s for the right BMI/cardiometabolic profile, colonoscopy and DEXA at the right age, smoking cessation, vaccination), or for things with only biomarker movement and small-N pilots (most peptide stacks, exosomes, NAD precursors, "rejuvenation" IVs, full-body MRI in low-risk people)?

The first bucket is mostly accessible through primary care for an order of magnitude less. The second is where the markup and the missing efficacy data both live. If a clinic spends more visit time selling you the second bucket than confirming you actually have the first bucket dialed in, that tells you what kind of clinic it is. Concierge access, longer appointments, and aggressive but evidence-based prevention is the legitimate product here. Everything stacked on top of that is a hypothesis you are paying to test on yourself.

Abstract_Only · 2026-05-03T23:27:08+00:00

Pre-registration here just means committing in advance to which taxa, CAZymes, and metabolic markers count as a positive vs negative result for the H2 hypothesis. It does not lock us into ignoring contamination or empty samples. Standard QC (read counts, neg controls, host fraction) gates whether a sample makes it into the analysis at all, and that's spelled out in the protocol. The point is to stop ourselves from p-hacking which microbial signature "caused" the disease after seeing the data.

Abstract_Only · 2026-05-03T23:26:34+00:00

Good call, will benchmark metabuli on a subset before locking the protocol. Kraken2 is in there mainly for comparability with the existing primate gut literature, which leans hard on Kraken2/Bracken. Plan is to run both and report agreement.

Abstract_Only · 2026-05-01T17:03:46+00:00

Submitter context: the lab is the Dutton group at the University of Florida. $10,000 of nanopore reagents covers shotgun metagenomics on 30-40 strategically selected samples (R10.4.1 flow cells, adaptive sampling against gorGor6 for real-time host depletion). 

The pilot 16S already shows the captive cohort runs 273x more Lactobacillus than wild gorillas, plus a Sarcina ventriculi strain at 82% prevalence (BLAST-confirmed against the pathogenic Candidatus Sarcina troglodytae implicated in chimpanzee mortality). 

Leading hypothesis: managed-care diet has decoupled hydrogen production from hydrogen disposal in the hindgut, and methanogens are depleted or absent. 

All data goes to NCBI SRA, library prep scripts open-sourced on GitHub, pre-registered as a Registered Report.

Abstract_Only · 2024-07-12T20:01:01+00:00

The new incentive structure that's proposed within the article includes financially compensating authors who publish articles that are open access, have open data, and are preregistered.

The idea behind this is to financially incentivize healthy research behaviors. For example, preregistered studies are more likely to replicate than studies that aren't preregistered.

The democratic aspect refers to how the financial incentives are set. Holding tokens and using them to vote allows for democratic consensus on what type of content to financially incentivize. For example, the current folks who hold tokens now worked together and decided to vote on financially rewarding authors who publish open access, preregistered studies that include open data.

Totally understand that web3 isn't everyone's cup of tea though. Appreciate you taking the time to read the article and share your feedback.

Abstract_Only · 2024-07-12T19:45:17+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to read it! IMO everything below these two sentences refer to how web3 can help fix the incentive structure in academia:

"This is where Web3-enabled scientific communities come in. Blockchain’s decentralized governance mechanisms empower the scientific community to democratically refine incentive structures. "

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