Objective Measures or Subjective Measures? In this week’s blog, we take a look at the difference between objective and subjective measures in capturing the impact of early life trauma on mental health. Psychological traumas are typically defined as experiences that cause actual or potential harm…
We realised that despite having run our blog for over 5 years, and many of us using twin data, we had not yet written a brief overview of the twin method. Here Prof Thalia Eley provides a summary of the main principles underlying the approach. …
Nearly all human traits, such as height, weight, and intelligence, and common disorders like major depressive and anxiety disorders are polygenic. This means that variation in more than one gene (usually many genes) contributes to total genetic predisposition for a specific trait or disorder. Chris outlines how Polygenic Risk Scores…
Joni Coleman tackles the complex subject of delivering transparent, robust science to all – and almost manages not to talk about Twitter.
Decades of twin studies have yielded evidence of the heritability of many different traits. What we mean by this is the proportion of variation in a trait that can be explained by genetic differences between individuals. Research has moved towards identifying specific genetic variants associated with these traits through Genome-Wide…
Decades of twin studies have shown that childhood behaviour problems including anxiety, depression, conduct and hyperactivity are substantially heritable. However, our recent research found that individual differences in behaviour problems are not significantly influenced by the common DNA differences that we directly measure. This finding held across diverse domains of…
Last time out, I discussed options for replicating findings from a genome-wide association study when no appropriate cohort exists for replication. Perhaps the most effective solution was time – wait for more samples, get more power and prove those pesky doubters wrong. As all good sci-fi fans know (and as…
Replication is the lifeblood of science – but how do you replicate when your cohort is the biggest available? EDiT Lab Associate Member and genomics crank-turner postdoc extraordinaire Joni gives three ways how.
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot tells the story of the woman behind the first immortal human cell-line and that of her family. This book also highlights the research discoveries and important ethical issues ignited by the HeLa cells.
An ever-expanding methodological toolbox is one of the privileges of 21st century science. For most of us, the pace of Moore’s law-driven technological advancement is now so familiar as to be almost taken for granted. However, the mere availability of technologically-advanced new methods is not a guaranteed solution to any…
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