Surfing into the genomic future
The decline in cost per genomeWithin genomics circles, the chart above illustrating the crash in sequencing costs since the year 2000 is famous. The reason it is famous is that it shows that genomic technology began to outrun the famous “Moore’s Law”, …
Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen are genetically similar to full-siblings or mother and son
I’ve posted on this before. So I will post again just to reiterate something: in terms of genes, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen are much closer to being full-siblings than they are to being aunt and nephew. You get different numbers depending on how deeply you look at the pedigree of the two. But their […]
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 22: Solving the Missing Heritability
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 22: Solving the Missing Heritability“Narrow-sense” heritabilityThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Google Podcasts) we discuss the “missing heritability,” and whether it has been “s…
In search of the missing heritability
We’ve always known that parents resemble their offspring. An intuitive understanding of how traits are passed down in families is probably as old as our species and its ability to reflect on the world around us. The ancient Romans would often observe a…
The Insight hits 200,000 downloads!
After a year and a half, and 50+ podcasts over two seasons, The Insight has surpassed 200,000 downloads. We appreciate everyone’s support, especially those who have left positive reviews on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher. The Insight is also on Spotify, G…
Sydney Brenner: the passing of a giant
Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner, who helped place Singapore on biotech world stage, dies at 92. If you are in genetics and development you know who Brenner his, and what he meant to these fields. I happened to be in the room with Brenner once, in Berkeley in 2008 I believe. He was already quite an […]
Echoes of Europe’s Pleistocene Past
Lascaux Cave, 17,000-year-old Magdalenian “paintings”40,000 years ago the first modern humans arrived in Europe. They were the scions of a great scattering of Africans. One branch of the “Out of Africa” migration, from which the vast majority of the an…
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 20: This View of Life, Completing the Darwinian…
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 20: This View of Life, Completing the Darwinian RevolutionThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Google Podcasts) we discuss the “evolutionary thinking” with David Sloan Wilson, the Pr…
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 18: The genetics of the Irish
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 18: The genetics of the IrishThe Hill of TaraThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Podcasts) we discuss the genetics of the Irish with Dr. Lara Cassidy. She is a researcher at Trinity C…
Swidden rice farming does not lead to high population density
I’ve been looking at the data from the recent Munda paper. Standard stuff, admixture, treemix, and f-statistics.The northern Munda samples were collected in Bangladesh. So I thought: I can test the hypothesis that the East Asian ancestry in Bangladesh is to a large part Santhal. After looking at it every which way, I think that […]
Irish memories faded into myth
Newgrange Neolithic mound site in IrelandLocated on the northwestern fringe of Europe, on the “edge of the world,” Ireland has occupied a special place in the imagination of the West. It was a mild green land beyond the Roman frontier. But it was also …
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 17: Polygenic risk scores and diversity
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 17: Polygenic risk scores and diversityThe risk for coronary heart diseaseThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Podcasts) we discuss “polygenic risk scores” (PRS) and genetic diversity …
The dearth of diversity in genomics
Citation: Martin, Alicia R., et al. bioRxiv(2019): 441261.One of the curious things about genomics is the field has exploded in the 21st century so fast, with such explosive growth and increase in power, that it is hard to keep up if you blink. The fir…
The Syeds of South Asia are the sons of Hindus and Magians
The above figure shows the frequencies of Y chromosomal haplogroups of men of South Asian who claim to be descended from the prophet or his tribe, as cross-referend with their surnames. The “Non-IHL” category indicates those who are not of these honored lineages. The paper from which I drew the data, Y chromosomes of self-identified …
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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 16: Blueprint, a conversation with Robert Plomin
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 16: Blueprint, a conversation with Robert PlominCorrelation on a scatterplotThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Podcasts) we discuss behavior genetics with Robert Plomin, one of the e…
A blueprint in our genes for behavior?
Since the emergence of the field of genetics over a century ago the question of “nature vs. nurture” has loomed large over the field when it comes to the nature of “human nature.” The very term “human nature” is a tell as to its origins and early conno…
Arabia between Africa & Eurasia
Arabia between Africa and EurasiaShanidar cave in Iraq, once occupied by NeanderthalsFor hundreds of thousands of years Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans interacted in the broad zone of territory we now call the “Middle East.” Neanderthal…
We are all Aryans now
Last year I contributed a chapter to a book soon to be published in India, Which of Us are Aryans? In answer to the question, the straightforward answer is that almost all of us are Aryans. That is, the thin but persistent layer of Indo-Aryan (“steppe”) ancestry is present across the subcontinent. In higher fractions …
Dreaming of billions of genomes
In the year 2000 scientists finished the draft of the complete human genome. The “reference” for what came after. Even ten years earlier some researchers were questioning the feasibility of any such project! In the early 1990s, many assumed it would be…
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 13: Is the FBI Watching Your DNA?
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 13: Is the FBI Watching Your DNA?This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Podcasts)we discussed the controversy that has erupted around Family Tree DNA and genetic privacy. We talked to Ju…