Home | Community | Message Board

Original Seeds Store
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: PhytoExtractum Maeng Da Thai Kratom Leaf Powder   Kraken Kratom Kratom Capsules for Sale, Red Vein Kratom   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
OfflineDoodlin
Stranger
I'm a teapot
Registered: 10/17/18
Posts: 56
Last seen: 4 years, 11 months
Human genetics * 1
    #25545816 - 10/17/18 09:51 PM (5 years, 3 months ago)

Hi all,

Brand new member and I've been blown away by the depth of knowledge and the community here, so much so that I've thought -- why not try and give a bit back?  As I'm actually a lecturer I figured this forum would be the perfect place to start with my first post.  :smile:

A bit of background -- PhD in genetics, medical researcher, lecturer.  My areas of expertise are human genomics, genetic disease, and cancer. I used to work in the lab too so can speak to things like PCR and cloning etc.

So the topic is human genetics with a particular focus on health, though I can probably write something intelligent about genetics more generally.  Unfortunately fungi are not my area and I'll leave that to actual experts in that field.

It's such a broad area I'll leave it to the floor for questions, and try and duck back in every couple of days.  Some ideas to kick off:
  • How much do we know about how our genes affect our health? What's coming up in this area?
  • How do / should I get my genome tested, and what am I likely to find out?  Will it be useful to me?  What could go wrong?
  • What is cancer, how does it start, and how is precision oncology supposed to help stop it?
  • What are some ethical issues around human genomics?
  • What's it like being a researcher?  (caution: answer largely depends on how close to grants season it is)


If some particularly keen soul wants to get down-and-dirty and ask how to map and call variation in a human genome, or do a GWAS, or do molecular cloning, or whatever... bring that on too. :cool:


Edited by Doodlin (01/08/19 03:15 AM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisiblemushfuss
Bubbles
 User Gallery


Registered: 06/20/18
Posts: 126
Re: Human genetics [Re: Doodlin]
    #25548181 - 10/18/18 06:21 PM (5 years, 3 months ago)

How do you like being a researcher? Is it mostly curiosity based, or do you have mostly set things to work on(that weren't first creative ideas)?

Would it be the same without the lecturing counter-part?

If a father and a grandmother(mother's side) both had cancer, are the odds higher than someone else?

What can I ACTUALLY do to slow that down? Eat natural, exercise, stay fit?

Something everyone should be aware of to reduce self-harm in this area?


Edited by mushfuss (10/18/18 06:22 PM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineDoodlin
Stranger
I'm a teapot
Registered: 10/17/18
Posts: 56
Last seen: 4 years, 11 months
Re: Human genetics [Re: mushfuss]
    #25549235 - 10/19/18 05:53 AM (5 years, 3 months ago)

Great questions, thanks!

-----

Quote:

How do you like being a researcher? Is it mostly curiosity based, or do you have mostly set things to work on(that weren't first creative ideas)?  Would it be the same without the lecturing counter-part?




I enjoy being a researcher, though it's certainly not how I thought it'd be, and the job changes a lot as you move along.  When you're at the career peak in terms of doing actual research (PhD, early postdoc) it is all research, very curiosity based, and there's a huge amount of freedom. As you move up the ladder past early postdoc the actual research tails off and admin / management / money seeking starts to become more part of the job.  By the time you're at the top (not me) it changes again, to mostly politics / chasing big money.

Biggest upside: flexibility (at first) -- do what I want, when I want, how I want to do it.  Biggest downside: you're always looking for money -- money to do experiments, money to pay your wage, money to pay your staff.  It's a lot of work to get the cash, say 2 months to write a grant, success rate 10-20%, so it's pretty stressful.  Lots of people who do great science leave as postdocs just because they don't get lucky with grants and can't stay.

I've been a full-time researcher most of the time, the teaching is relatively new. I do enjoy it though. Great students are awesome.

-----

Quote:

If a father and a grandmother(mother's side) both had cancer, are the odds higher than someone else?




Interesting question on the family history.  It depends a lot on the precise pattern of cancer.

Roughly 1/3 people in first world countries will be diagnosed with some kind of cancer, so on the face of it it's not unusual to have a couple of relatives with cancer.  If these were late onset (say > 60 yrs) common cancers, that person's odds of carrying a clinically significant higher risk would be a little higher than someone with no relatives with cancer at all, but by a negligible amount.

It's a different story if the cancers are early-onset (under 50) and on the same side of the family.  Especially so if the types of cancer form a particular pattern (eg lots of sarcoma or brain cancer). That would suggest a familial cancer syndrome and I think a doctor definitely should be consulted.

In the example, because it's on different sides of the family and there's no other close history, it's unlikely to be a cancer syndrome, and the cancer risk of that person would likely not be exceptional.

-----

Quote:

What can I ACTUALLY do to slow that down? Eat natural, exercise, stay fit?




There's not much to do right now that will help yourself, but there's pretty cool stuff on the horizon.

Eat well and exercise is never bad advice, even if you get a 100% clean genetic bill of health. :smile:  There's good evidence to suggest that exercise slows down cancer development (eg https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2521826 ), and food and drink is very important too. Even if you do end up being diagnosed with cancer, it's better to face that healthy and fit than not.

In the near future we should be able to do precision cancer screening: find people at high genetic risk of cancer, and offer them MRIs regularly so that any cancer that pops up is found early.  We've got the technology to do this now, it's just regulatory and funding issues that are in the way.  Down the road there's some immensely cool stuff appearing around the idea of preventative intervention (eg https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0081-z, it's on bioRxiv as a preprint if you're paywalled) -- essentially finding *pre-cancer*, and treating that.  Think Minority Report for cancer.  Lots and lots yet to do in this area but it's damn interesting.

One thing people can do today that won't help themselves, but might help their kids: preimplantation screening or prenatal testing.  It's only applicable in very severe cases (eg Li Fraumeni Syndrome), it's obviously not for everyone, and it's not even legal in some places.  I don't want to get into the ethics at all, just mentioning that it's something that's out there right now that in serious cases can help a parent make sure their child doesn't inherit their condition.

-----

Quote:

Something everyone should be aware of to reduce self-harm in this area?




Self-harm in terms of giving yourself cancer?  Best single thing to avoid is smoking tobacco. It's just crazy how bad that is for you, not only in terms of cancer. Not that interesting I know, I think everyone knows that, but next to tobacco everything else in terms of cancer risk looks like a rounding error.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineRJ Tubs 202
Male


Registered: 09/20/08
Posts: 6,010
Loc: USA Flag
Last seen: 1 day, 4 hours
Re: Human genetics [Re: Doodlin]
    #25712897 - 12/30/18 11:49 PM (5 years, 29 days ago)

I've worked in plant breeding for 25 years and am wondering how you feel about GMO's.

Do you think the current anti-GMO hysteria will subside as we implement gene therapy?


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineDoodlin
Stranger
I'm a teapot
Registered: 10/17/18
Posts: 56
Last seen: 4 years, 11 months
Re: Human genetics [Re: RJ Tubs 202] * 1
    #25714329 - 12/31/18 04:59 PM (5 years, 28 days ago)

Being a plant breeder you're probably better informed on this than I am!  Like most other genetics researchers I'm fine with GMO food of any variety. I'd far prefer some Bt protein in my food than an organophosphate or carbamate. I suspect that most average shoppers are pretty ambivalent also, and that the anti-GMO thing will always be around on the fringe, but with time will fade away from the mainstream arena. Just my guess though -- any sociologists around? :P

Gene therapy is an interesting point though. Here I'm not so cool with it, and neither are many of my colleagues. Specifically with the recent case in China, there's a big worry that we're messing around with lives using very new and poorly-tested technology, for no medical reason. This is nothing like the plant arena where things are tested to exhaustion. This is "oh look we managed to get to work once in a mouse -- let's just give it a go in a person right away!" Gene therapy has great potential, but research could be set back many years by cowboy science like this. Gelsinger's death was a wake-up call that shouldn't need to be repeated.

And I'll get off my soapbox now, sorry :smile:


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: PhytoExtractum Maeng Da Thai Kratom Leaf Powder   Kraken Kratom Kratom Capsules for Sale, Red Vein Kratom   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order


Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Middleman
603 topic views. 0 members, 0 guests and 2 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.023 seconds spending 0.008 seconds on 15 queries.