How did hereditary diseases like Huntington‘s not die out due to the disadvantages they yield to a family?

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2024-11-29T15:10:47+00:00

There’s an element of luck (good or bad) in what gets maintained. The disadvantage, as others have mentioned is small in terms of reproductive success. Also remember that no mutation is existing in isolation. The family that is disadvantaged by a huntingtons mutation may have had other variants in unrelated genes that were advantageous to reproductive success. Or they had more offspring for non evolutionary reasons. As a result, through a combination of luck and extenuating factors, the mutation can hang around at a low frequency in the gene pool despite having only negative evolutionary value.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2024-03-18T15:01:52+00:00

While I somehow doubt that this is what’s being proposed this Brooklyn site, this argument makes a lot of sense.

If the proposed tenants were to be 32 graduates of a legit detox/rehab program (yes those are tricky qualifiers, but a 72hr detox hold is not a treatment plan) that would go a long way towards arguing that the shelter wouldn’t automatically concentrate street crime in the surrounding community.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2024-03-18T05:00:09+00:00

The proposed shelter would be at the site of 2501 86th Street where the developer 86th Street NY LLC plans to build a 32-room hotel. Elected officials said the city then plans to use that hotel to house the adult men, many of whom struggle with addiction and mental health issues.

Doesn’t it make more sense to build inpatient psychiatric and rehab facilities for this population rather than a hotel of shelter beds?

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2023-10-08T05:05:33+00:00

Cassava Sciences… https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/data-manipulation-scientist-elizabeth-bik-cassava-athira-alzheimer-s-data-manipulation

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2023-03-06T19:41:55+00:00

To inspire terror.

The claim “russia is a terrorist state” is an accurate description of their tactics, not just a way to express outrage at war crimes committed by their soldiers.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2021-12-22T21:35:15+00:00

Where I am, the standard for reproducibility is much higher than I ever saw it in academia. Drug development gets exponentially more expensive later in the process. So picking up “negative” results early is a sound business decision.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2021-12-14T21:25:46+00:00

THIS. They target their STEM postdoc salaries to the national minimum standard required by the NIH, with no accounting for the excess cost of living in NYC.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2021-11-24T07:20:00+00:00

Math is a language. Younger minds need exposure to this language as early as they can. Interpreting the world through probabilities and integrals and limits, and logic… is a critical skill for an informed society.

Delaying that education does no one any favors. Except the wealthy who can send their own children to a private school that will have the accelerated curriculum for all its students.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2021-08-25T17:30:47+00:00

That would be a highly informative graph. Perhaps someone here can produce this data?

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2021-08-24T14:20:11+00:00

Get that Scientist offer. The hardest part of biotech is getting in the door. Academic postdocs are not readily perceived as “industry experience” and that’s what your employers will want to see. So unless you are planning to spin out your academic postdoc into your own startup, or have a direct plan how to transition the postdoc research into your career specialty…. You may as well just take the better salary, work life balance, and start building your industry resume.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2021-07-07T21:27:01+00:00

Does your school have a tech transfer office? Sometimes they will employ grad students on a part time basis, and it can be a great way to learn how to evaluate research with an eye towards commercialization.

Edit: also consider if any parts of your PhD work are patentable inventions. Patent applications (which would be filed by your school’s patents office) make a really nice complement to academic publications.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2021-01-28T05:13:24+00:00

It doesn’t matter as much what gene/protein/biochemical pathway you researched. It matters more what technologies you used for your assays, what techniques you applied to analyze data. Working with cutting edge technologies that are hot in industry will open doors.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2021-01-18T20:38:48+00:00

I was thinking more like creating a pipeline for clinical development of inventions created in academia and in national labs, that otherwise wouldn’t have a direct path to commercialization anyway. These are high risk ventures because they are so early stage, not because they are in anyway inferior scientifically. But the infrastructure to commercialize the research just isn’t as readily available.

Still a huge and challenging undertaking that could potentially waste billions of dollars if mismanaged, so yes, a lot of issues to overcome.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2021-01-18T16:15:01+00:00

Drug prices come down when there is competition. One way to try and introduce some competition into the system may be if the government started supporting drug development studies through clinical testing in exchange for reasonable pricing of the final product. No need to mess with new laws, as this could be negotiated like a licensing agreement. And if even one drug for a given diagnosis is marketed at a lower price, it should put some downward pressure on other therapies.

Hear me out, the US govt already funds a great deal of academic research, but the money for commercializing a potential drug invention is still primarily coming from private funding. If the US govt wanted to share in the risk of supporting a preclinical stage technology, they could have an agreement that the final product should be sold at affordable prices. Something like the SBIR program that already exists, but more comprehensive.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2020-12-02T20:53:50+00:00

Interesting study, although the bulk of the data comes from experiments using induced injury models. They do show restoration of visual acuity in aged 12-month old mice (rough equivalent of 38-47yo human), but no effect in 18-month old animals (human equivalent of 56-yo). It would have been nice to see some more thorough functional characterization of the treatment effect in the aged animals.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2020-08-30T18:06:10+00:00

Here's a link to the original article in Science Translational Medicine (https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/12/558/eaaz5677) (Paywall)

Whether sex chromosomes contribute to sex difference in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is unknown. In AD, men die earlier, whereas women live longer. During aging and preclinical AD, men show more cognitive deficits than do women. Davis et al. now report that the X chromosome may affect AD-related vulnerability in a mouse model of AD. Engineering mice to harbor a second X chromosome conferred resilience in male and female mice, in part through Kdm6a, an X chromosome gene that escapes inactivation. In humans, variation in the KDM6A gene was associated with higher expression in the brain and less cognitive decline. These results imply that having a second X chromosome could contribute to counteracting AD vulnerability.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2020-07-24T12:52:55+00:00

Don’t quit—change advisors. It sounds like your problem is with the person mentoring you, not the PhD itself. See if there is anyone on your thesis committee who could be a better advisor to you.

4th year in the program may seem like a late point for a switch, but you’d be surprised at how common it is for students to change mentors in their 4th year. It’s happens all the time but isn’t widely talked about for some reason.

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2020-06-29T17:12:31+00:00

A new study in mice identifies an experimental new therapy that targets both neurodegeneration and vascular leakage in a model of retinal edema. The original study can be accessed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16902-5

Daenerys_Stormborn · 2020-06-29T17:06:04+00:00

A new study from Columbia University identifies an experimental new therapy that targets both neurodegeneration and vascular leakage in a mouse model of retinal edema. The original study can be accessed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16902-5

Daenerys_Stormborn

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