I have no idea where genetics is heading now. A Nature paper last week on the “population relevance of 95 loci for blood lipids” at least ends somewhere in the nowhere. Take not only 100 thousand participants but 100 million participants and you will get 95,000 loci – sorry to all my friends on the author list – that’s crap. Another, more interesting development during my recent absence in the Alpes comes by the Royal Society

In 1993 the world’s population was 5.5 billion; it is now 6.8 billion and is due to hit 7 billion by early 2012. A major new study looking at the implications of the changes in global population is being launched by the Royal Society with an expected conclusion in early 2012. [...] (Show me more…)

At the Lindau Nobel site we can submit questions to Nobel prize winners. Most of them are trivial or even boring – basically how to make a career or what rank did you have in your university studentship. My proposal to ask there: “Is another information layer on top of the known DNA sequence?” You may want vote for my question, thanks!

One of the best questions so far is “Many people consider the peer-review system broken. If you share that opinion, do you have a solution?” by Clay Barnard.

Roy Glauber, Nobel Laureate in Physics 2005: The current system is pretty poor. So now it’s not a question of spending a lot of money, as it can be resolved very easily without. Good papers last and bad papers don’t. Individuals should rate the papers, although this may not need to be done in an official way.
Sir John Walker, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1997: The peer review system does have problems, but it is the best we have got and I am very much opposed to replacing it with a numerical assessment system. It is a lousy way of assessing people and the pressure to change this system comes from science bureaucrats. This is because it is scientsists making decisions about scientists’ work and the bureaucrats don’t like that; they want to have control.
Jean-Marie Lehn, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1987: That’s an interesting question! I have been interested in it for a very long time. I think we need to have a control otherwise things get in the literature that should not be there …

Here comes my most favorite paper in 2010 so far, clearly written and elegant in it’s simplicity. It is printed in this week’ Nature magazine

One reason for this is that epigenetic factors are sometimes malleable and plastic enough to react to cues from the external and internal environments. Such induced epigenetic changes can be solidified and propagated during cell division, resulting in permanent maintenance of the acquired phenotype.

Petronis sees heritability as multiple layers (like a Russian matryoshka doll) which is a far more appropriate view than the current DNA sequence based view.
The paper touches many points that I will also include in a forthcoming review where I am describing epigenetics as a buffering system before changes are permanently written in the genome, yea, yea.

I need to refer here to a post 3 years ago or to the medical literature that genes frequencies changed rapidly between generations.
Although that is even the basis of a submitted Great Challenge Application at the Gates Foundation any empirical proof is scarce so far.
Or I have to say, until this week, when I found a study published earlier in PLoS ONE that tackles this problem: Selection for Genetic Variation Inducing Pro-Inflammatory Responses under Adverse Environmental Conditions in a Ghanaian Population (Show me more…)