This is a very nice example of how to summarize a paper and make it very digestible even for a lay audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWJNCX0-p60
Link to the original paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12550/abstract
My house/backyard possum
Providing me company while I was sitting on the deck, enjoying the first night in Melbournian autumn.
New database for effects of drugs on lifespan in model organisms
This is a new database with over 1,000 entries of drugs, compounds and supplements that extend longevity in model organisms. The DrugAge database of ageing-related drugs is available at: http://genomics.senescence.info/drugs/
1, 2, 10000…simulate!
Simulations of the evolution of sexual dimorphism: I decided to keep the nice one-package approach, using R for simulations (and not Mathematica, which still comes in handy sometimes, for example to double-check derivatives).
Felix’s code and equation blob
Check out our findings on how fit male flies evolved on chronic DR are
Hot off the press, here it is:
Evolution under dietary restriction increases male reproductive performance without survival cost
Melbourne, here I come
I’m very excited to be on my way to start working with Tim Connallon at Monash.
Epigenetic inheritance in Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’ (1859)
What we know today as Lamarckian inheritance was mainstream thinking in the 19th century. Even Darwin saw no problem in adding a flavour of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance to his famous book:
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.
Exceptional bats
NY times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/science/no-time-for-bats-to-rest-easy.html?_r=0
and here is the source, in Nature Coomunications: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130820/ncomms3212/full/ncomms3212.html
Loss of the Y chromosome in peripheral blood cells might exlplain why elderly men have higher cancer rate than women
Forsberg et al. 2014. Mosaic loss of chromosome Y in peripheral blood is associated with shorter survival and higher risk of cancer. Nature Genetics. LINK.
Craig Venter interview on his new Human Longevity Inc. project
The following is from http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/j-craig-venter-living-longer-healther-lives/ where the recording of the interview can also be found.
“Genomic and synthetic life scientist J. Craig Venter says aging is a phenomenon we can control and arrest through genomic science. He believes that by aggressively accelerating human mapping we can better understand—and prevent—the consequences of human aging.
J. Craig Venter’s new project is called Human Longevity Inc. and comes with private funding and an association with the University of California San Diego. The company will combine genetic and medical data at a massive scale to come up with new ways to predict, prevent and treat diseases of aging, such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s. Venter says it will be the largest DNA sequencing operation in the world—capable of processing 40,000 human genomes a year.
“Age is the number one risk factor for every disease, but it’s not treated as a disease on its own,” says Venter.
To crack the question of aging, Venter says his new project will connect layers of information that have never been put together, starting with the entire human genome and then layering in the genetic code of the microbes, in addition to measuring proteins and chemicals.”
