The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 4: Finnish Genetics
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 4: Finnish GeneticsMidsummer in FinlandThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play) we discussed the prehistory and genetics of the Uralic peoples, with a particular focus on the people …
The expansion of the polar people
The expansion of the polar peopleSami in the far north of EuropeSince the development of agriculture 12,000 years ago, the cultural and genetic landscape of our world has been transformed by the emergence of peasants as the dominant demographic. For mo…
Why PCA and genetics are a match made in heaven
Insitome customers and selected populationsThe image above is not the work of a small child trying to sketch out a B-2 Stealth Bomber. Rather, it is a PCA plot, which shows the distribution of a subset of Insitome’s customers who have purchased the Reg…
India is eternal but Indians are not
This week’s episode of The Insight dug deeply into the current scientific understanding of the genetic origins of the peoples of the Indian subcontinent. Recent publications and media coverage have caught the science in midstream, as scholars have to d…
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 3: ANI, ASI, IVC and The Genetics of India
A scene from an ancient Indian epicThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play) we discussed how the genetics of 25% of the world’s population, the people of South Asia, came to be. It’s a journey of thousands of years.We cited t…
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 2: The Greatest Human Journey
This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play) we touched upon arguably one of the greatest human journeys of humankind, the expansion of the Polynesians across the Pacific.Bishop MuseumSpencer discussed his visit to the Bishop Mus…
Hawaii: complicated a journey to paradise
The extent of Austronesian DiasporaAsk any American what they think when you say the word “Hawaii,” and certain words will no doubt reoccur from person to person. That’s because certain images, feelings, come to mind. A gentle breeze, beaches, and volc…
The dual engines of modern science
A few years ago Armand Leroi wrote The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. Some people immediately made a critique that actually, science, as we understand it, is really the creation of early modern Europe. That Aristotle and his fellow Ancients, or physicians and astronomers of early medieval Islam, or the scholastics of the high Middle […]
The Insight Show Notes: Episode 32, So you want to be a geneticist…
DrosophilaThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play) we talk to an “early career” geneticist, Austin Reynolds. A graduate of Indian University and University of Texas-Austin, he is currently a post-doctoral fellow at University…
The Insight show notes: Episode 29, The Genetics of China, Han & Beyond
This week Razib and Spencer discussed the genetics and history of China on The Insight (iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play).Chinese history looms large in the podcast, and there are many books one can read on the topic. In particular, John King Fairbank’…
Have your exome sequenced for $29.99
Just a reminder that for the rest June Helix DNA kits with the cost of an Insitome app. Buy Regional Ancestry, Metabolism, or Neanderthal, and start your lifelong DNA journey with Helix for just $29.99! A great gift idea.That means for the cost of an a…
Genetics of uniqueness
Ati woman from the PhilippinesHui Chinese Muslim manTrue genetic isolation is hard to pull off. Human populations tend to mix when they are in close proximity.Consider the Hui people. These are Muslims who live across China and speak the local Chinese …
Three drinks for the ages
Irish CoffeeThe “Irish coffee” is a a delicious concoction. Coffee, alcohol, and dairy. What more can you ask for? Man does not live on bread and water alone. Cafes and bars are thick on the ground in large cities, but also grace country roads. Coffee …
Arise the coalescent!
Citation: Modeling Human Population Separation History Using Physically Phased GenomesEvolution is sometimes difficult to comprehend in terms of how it plays out in your mind’s eye. This is different from believing that evolution occurred. Evolutionary…
The tribe more diverse than all of Asia!
BushmanIn 2010, a paper, which sequenced the whole genome of Bishop Desmond Tutu, revealed that the San Bushmen of South Africa show more genetic difference between two men from different tribes than the differences between a European and an East Asian…
The “X” in the sex chromosome
There are ~3 billion base pairs in the human genome. Of that ~5% are in the X chromosome. The X is fully functional, unlike the famously hamstrung Y. It harbors one of the longest genes in the human genome, DMD, at 2,300,000 base pairs. In contrast, th…
DNA, from genetics to genomics
In the early 1950s scientists established that the molecular structure of DNA was a double helix. The had discovered the physical substrate of heredity. With this discovery the field of molecular genetics was born (and eventually a Nobel Prize given!)….
Brown fat, the bad kind
Unless you have been hiding under a rock you know that people of South Asian are at more risk for metabolic disease than is the norm. More concretely we tend toward “skinny fat.” My current BMI 24. By normal calculators I’m normal weight (barely), because the cut-off is 25. But for South Asian we should … Continue reading “Brown fat, the bad kind”
The braided estuary of human evolution
Metaphors matter because they evoke images, and images are often one of the best ways to understand something in a deep fashion. Consider Charles Darwin’s musing:“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank…”He brought something memorable and famil…
The “g” in genes
What’s next?Intelligence, or smarts, is once of those words which has many meanings. That’s why we say “street smart” or “book smart.” When psychologists speak of intelligence, however, they are usually referring to something more precise and specific….