Fluorescent zebrafish are the first genetically modified animals globally, if unevenly, circulated outside of laboratory environments. GloFish registered were developed in Singapore. They are widely ...sold as popular pets in the United States, but their public sale is banned in Europe and elsewhere. On the trail of these animals, I trace a fragmentary biogeography through ethnographic encounters in the spaces of scientific research, animal exhibits, pet stores, and art galleries, in Europe, the USA, and Singapore. At each site, as the colour, light, and intensities of neon flicker with the potential for life, and concern for animal lives move in and out of focus, I ask: what is the proper way of knowing and living with genetically altered zebrafish? To ask the question is to open up a conversation about the changing constitution of science and space, representation, and reproduction in relation to these new forms of life. To try to answer it demands attention to a baroque patterning of scientific practices, aesthetic sensibilities, ethical responsibilities, and political spatialities. In a discursive arena typically characterised by narratives of linearity-whether of scientific progress or slippery slopes-I suggest the affective sensibilities, theatrical qualities, and unresolved elements of the baroque offer powerful, if ambivalent, resources for reflection on the intersection between the animating aesthetics and turbulent ethics of postgenomic life.
Combining information from multiple SNPs may capture a greater amount of genetic variation than from the sum of individual SNP effects and help identifying missing heritability. Regions may capture ...variation from multiple common variants of small effect, multiple rare variants or a combination of both. We describe regional heritability mapping of human cognition. Measures of crystallised (gc) and fluid intelligence (gf) in late adulthood (64-79 years) were available for 1806 individuals genotyped for 549,692 autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The same individuals were tested at age 11, enabling us the rare opportunity to measure cognitive change across most of their lifespan. 547,750 SNPs ranked by position are divided into 10, 908 overlapping regions of 101 SNPs to estimate the genetic variance each region explains, an approach that resembles classical linkage methods. We also estimate the genetic variation explained by individual autosomes and by SNPs within genes. Empirical significance thresholds are estimated separately for each trait from whole genome scans of 500 permutated data sets. The 5% significance threshold for the likelihood ratio test of a single region ranged from 17-17.5 for the three traits. This is the equivalent to nominal significance under the expectation of a chi-squared distribution (between 1 df and 0) of P<1.44×10(-5). These thresholds indicate that the distribution of the likelihood ratio test from this type of variance component analysis should be estimated empirically. Furthermore, we show that estimates of variation explained by these regions can be grossly overestimated. After applying permutation thresholds, a region for gf on chromosome 5 spanning the PRRC1 gene is significant at a genome-wide 10% empirical threshold. Analysis of gene methylation on the temporal cortex provides support for the association of PRRC1 and fluid intelligence (P = 0.004), and provides a prime candidate gene for high throughput sequencing of these uniquely informative cohorts.
Differences in genomic structure between individuals are ubiquitous features of human genetic variation. Specific copy number variants (CNVs) have been associated with susceptibility to numerous ...complex psychiatric disorders, including attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder, autism-spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. These disorders often display co-morbidity with low intelligence. Rare chromosomal deletions and duplications are associated with these disorders, so it has been suggested that these deletions or duplications may be associated with differences in intelligence. Here we investigate associations between large (≥500kb), rare (<1% population frequency) CNVs and both fluid and crystallized intelligence in community-dwelling older people. We observe no significant associations between intelligence and total CNV load. Examining individual CNV regions previously implicated in neuropsychological disorders, we find suggestive evidence that CNV regions around SHANK3 are associated with fluid intelligence as derived from a battery of cognitive tests. This is the first study to examine the effects of rare CNVs as called by multiple algorithms on cognition in a large non-clinical sample, and finds no effects of such variants on general cognitive ability.
Discusses recurrent themes in qualitative studies in human geography -- questions of agency, embodiment and emotion, being within nature, and the performativity of place.
Previous functional gene group analyses implicated common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in heterotrimeric G protein coding genes as being associated with differences in human intelligence. ...Here, we sought to replicate this finding using five independent cohorts of older adults including current IQ and childhood IQ, and using both gene- and SNP-based analytic strategies. No significant associations were found between variation in heterotrimeric G protein genes and intelligence in any cohort at either of the two time points. These results indicate that, whereas G protein systems are important in cognition, common genetic variation in these genes is unlikely to be a substantial influence on human intelligence differences.
Data Shadows Leonelli, Sabina; Rappert, Brian; Davies, Gail
Science, technology, & human values,
03/2017, Letnik:
42, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This editorial critically engages with the understanding of openness by attending to how notions of presence and absence come bundled together as part of efforts to make open. This is particularly ...evident in contemporary discourse around data production, dissemination, and use. We highlight how the preoccupations with making data present can be usefully analyzed and understood by tracing the related concerns around what is missing, unavailable, or invisible (“data shadows”), which unvaryingly but often implicitly accompany debates about data and openness.
Following the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), a critical challenge has been how to make biological sense of the amassed sequence data and translate this into clinical applications. A ...range of large biological research projects, as well as more distributed experimental collaborations, are seeking to realise this through translational research initiatives and postgenomic approaches. Drawing on interviews with key participants, this article explores the biological assumptions, sociological challenges and spatial imaginaries at play in arguments around one of these developments, which is using genetically altered mice to understand gene function. The knockout mouse project (KOMP) is a large-scale initiative in functional genomics, seeking to produce a 'knockout mouse' for each gene in the mouse's genome, which can then be used to answer questions about gene function in mammals. KOMP is frequently framed as one successor to the HGP, emblematic of the ambitions of internationally coordinated biological research. However, the development of new technologies for generating and managing genetically altered mice, alongside the challenge of asking biologically meaningful questions of vast numbers of animals, is creating new frictions in this extension and intensification of biological research practices. This article introduces two separate approaches to the future of international research using mutant mice as stakeholders to negotiate the biological, sociological and spatial challenges of collaboration. The first centres on the directed research practices and sociological assumptions of KOMP, as individual researchers are reorganised around shared animals, databases and infrastructures. The second highlights an alternative vision of the future of biomedical research, using distributed management to enhance the sensitivities and efficiencies of existing experimental practices over space. These exemplify two different tactics in the organisation of an 'arguably' big biology. They also critically embody different sociological and spatial imaginaries for the collaborative practices of international translational research.
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