This blog post by Pam Baker originally appeared on the Alberta Epigenetics Network website on 31 October, 2018 Fear, it turns out, can be permanently etched in our epigenetics. When it is, it continues to affect the frightened long after the cause of the fright itself has gone. But horror doesn’t necessarily end with its victim’s mortal passing. Fear can be passed on to future generations, and the implications are disturbing to mental health professionals.…

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Since it kicked off in October of 2016, our project on "Systems biology and molecular ecology of Chronic Wasting Disease" has made some significant findings about the nature of CWD. The team has been able to identify different strains of the disease, gain insight into how long it lingers in the environment, and how to detect its presence in the wild. Since it was first discovered in Colorado in1967, CWD has spread to 24 US…

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Spend some time in a food court, and you’ll see that feeding behavior says a lot about people, for better or worse. Could such behavior also play a role in genetic prediction for beef cattle? That’s one of the questions being addressed as scientists apply genomics to improve key beef industry traits such as carcass quality and feed efficiency. “Part of my thesis is looking at feeding behavior and seeing if it has predictive value…

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For both people and pigs, weight can be a touchy subject. But while many of us obsess about our waistline, it’s the impact of pig birth weights on the bottom line that matters most to producers. As researchers apply genomics to improve disease resilience and sustainability in Canadian pork production, the size factor is weighing heavily on their minds. “The origin of the piglet has long term effects on productivity and health,” said Dr. Michael…

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                              I just finished reading Rob Dunn’s Never Home Alone. The take-home lesson? Among the very large number of organisms that live in our homes and on our bodies, from the microscopic to the visible, there are many, many good guys and a few bad guys. Once we learned about hygiene and germ theory, we tried to kill them all. Unfortunately, as we reduced the number of good guys, it gave the bad guys a…

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This blog post by Ada S. Jaarsma originally appeared on the Alberta Epigenetics Network website on 2 October, 2018 Ada Jaarsma is an Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Humanities at Mount Royal University. Her book Kierkegaard After the Genome: Science, Existence and Belief in this World (Palgrave Macmillan 2017) makes the case for the existential import of placebos, epigenetics and science studies. She is currently writing about epigenetics, nocebos and critical race…

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This blog post by Pam Baker originally appeared on the Alberta Epigenetics Network website on 30 September, 2018 Studies in epigenetics continue to add nuances to the nature vs nurture debate every day, but one message seems to underline them all: your fate is not sealed in your DNA. Epigenetics are unique to each individual since environmental factors and lifestyle choices vary for each person, even if only minimally. The resulting set of gene expressions…

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                     There are many benefits to reading to very young children. The American Academy of Pediatrics shows that reading daily to young children, starting in infancy, can help with language acquisition and literacy skills. They use the term "biological embedding" to describe this long-term benefit: getting the young brain ready to read. For many years, parent and teacher groups have championed daily reading to youngsters. If…

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Whether it’s perfume or your friend’s trip photos, less is more; when it comes to amassing data for the Efficient Dairy Genome Project, however, the more the merrier. Groundbreaking research in applying genomics to feed efficiency and methane emissions requires a lot of information and, as you might expect, gathering and analyzing big data is a big job. “I handle almost all the data produced by the research farm, and because of the number of…

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As spring nears, a young student’s thoughts turn to classic rites of passage: spring break; convocation; projects on retained heterozygosity. Though that last one may not be for everybody, it was front and centre for 30 third-year veterinary medicine students at the University of Calgary. “Every year, our third-year class does an original research project,” said Dr. Alastair Cribb, Professor, Clinical Pharmacology, Department of Comparative Biology and Experimental Medicine at the University of Calgary. “This…

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