Your Skin Is More Important than You Thought It Was
Okay, so I think we all know what happens to this little goldfish when he jumps out of the fish tank and makes a mad dash for freedom. Aside from […]
Author Archives: Emily Casanova
“Why Are Some Genomes So F***ing Big???”
Good question. And it’s been asked before. Usually this question arises within the context of “What use is a larger genome?” when we consider vast genomes such as the onion […]
Preliminary Data: Schizophrenia and Brain-related Genes May Have Higher Mobile Element Content Similar to that Seen in Autism
We recently wrote and submitted a Letter to the Editor of Neuron in response to the recent article by Bundo et al. (2014) reporting increased LINE1 retrotransposition in schizophrenia genomes. […]
Is the Female Brain More Resilient against Harmful Mutations?
It has long been a topic of debate and discussion whether the lop-sided rates of autism diagnosis (males > females) reflects real gender variations in phenotype or simply diagnostic bias. […]
A Mutation that Lowers Risk for Schizophrenia?
Last month, Rees et al. (2014) reported that, in contrast to copy number variant (CNV) deletions at the genetic locus, 22q11, which increase schizophrenia risk, duplications in that same region […]
The Prion Hypothesis: How Proteins May Create Heritable Memory
“How a genotype and its environment interact to yield a phenotype poses a vast epistemological gap. Proteins that exhibit conformational diversity and contingent functional multiplicity increase the dimensions of phenotypic […]
A New Study Reports that Oxytocin-mediated GABA Inhibition in Mouse Models of Autism Reduces Symptom Severity
In a study published this month in the journal, Science, Tyzio et al. (2014) report some exciting findings which help fill in some of the gaps on oxytocin research in […]
The Fragile X Spectrum of Conditions
I’ve talked about Fragile X Syndrome before and its relationship to autism, albeit briefly. What I didn’t touch on, however, is that Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) isn’t the only condition […]
Heterotopias in the Brain: When Neurons Get a Little Lost
I’ve talked a little about heterotopias in the past although I haven’t focused on them considerably. But that’s about to change today because they are fascinating occurrences which happen occasionally […]
The Evolution of Genetic Evolvability
“The hypothesis that evolvability – the capacity to evolve by natural selection – is itself the object of natural selection is highly intriguing but remains controversial due in large part […]
Science Over a Cuppa 
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