I just watched the old movie Star Trek Into Darkness with Chris Pine and Benedict Cumberbatch. The villain Khan is a genetically engineered superhuman who is smarter, stronger and faster than almost every normal human. Benedict does a great job playing a very smug and arrogant bad guy too. I'm just wondering how close we are to that kind of genetic engineering where we can make people smarter, stronger and faster? Or at least use it to do things like giving people stronger immune systems and stronger bones for better health? Or is that still very far off?

I know there's a lot of moral and ethical red lines here. Even if it's possible, playing God with the genetic code would raise all sorts of moral and ethical questions. It could only be done with consenting volunteers under strict controls and monitoring.

I want to ask if anyone is familiar with animal genetics and the relation of using it to sex fish specifically Diodon holocanthus. Thank you.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCA_984586875.1/.
https://portal.atlasea.fr/organism/diodon-holocanthus/

We have a project... due in 2 days. We need TWO people to interview regarding their views on gene therapy/editing. Ti**mezone: UTC +8

We ask for your profession and full name. If you consent to be interviewed, we must also ask your consent to record the meeting through Meet or Zoom. We will NOT post any media gathered from the interview on any platform, and all that is said will only be used for educational purposes

Thank you!!!

My task is to identify the chromosomes in these images… i’m trying but i have no one to ask so i don’t know if im doing it right. If y’all could help me with even just one of these images i would be very grateful. If you can, write the number of the chromosomes above them in the pictures so i can see if i’m doing it right.

If you can’t help directly, I’d really appreciate any similar practice images: metaphase spreads with numbered chromosomes and an answer key. I don’t need to practice arranging the karyotype, but identifying each chromosome directly from the metaphase image, which is what I have to do for my test next week. I’ve struggled to find exercises like these online, especially with solutions

Hi guys im 21 (F) and my bf is 26 and he is completely normal while i have beta thalseemia trait ...we are 3 siblings out of us only i got it and i got it from my dad...my dad found out at around the age of 50 that he has this.

Dad got it from my grandmother but we all are asymptomatic and live a normal life...my dad is 54 now , im 21 and grandma died at almost 100 so its fine with all of us but my future partner is a bit concerned.

Any person here who can tell me what exactly to expect if we have kids?will they have thal minor too ?(remember i am beta thal minor trait and he doesnt have anything like this )will they live a normal life like all of us?

Any guidance in this regard will be highly appreciated.

Hi, I recently graduated with a BSc in biochem, and am interested in pursuing a career related to genetics down the road. Currently considering a couple masters and advanced certificate programs, but I would do these later as I’m planning to work for a couple years before returning to school full time.

I’m wondering if there are any other programs/courses that I can do on the side that would be helpful for grad school applications/just to increase my knowledge. I am in Vancouver, Canada, but am open to online options as well. Thank you!

Christie's catalog notes for auction Oct. 13, Lot 81 Fine Printed Books, Manuscripts and Science

MENDEL, Johann Gregor (1822-1884). "Versuche uber Pflanzen-Hybriden." Offprint from: Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brunn. Vol. IV (1865). pp. [3]-47. Brno: Georg Gastl for the Naturforschenden Verein, 1866."One of the most important papers in the history of biology, and the foundation of modern genetics" (DSB).

Extremely rare offprint issue and in very fine condition. Sold for $640,000; high presale estimate was $350,000 (lot 81)

The son of Moravian peasants, Mendel was an academically gifted child. He was determined not to follow the family tradition of farming, and instead entered the Augustinian monastery at Brunn (now Brno) in 1843. The monastery itself was dedicated to teaching, and was filled with an array of academic monks, one of whom, Fr Aurelius Thaler (1796-1843), established an experimental garden.

In 1851 Mendel enrolled at Vienna University, where he was exposed to a wide range of scientific courses including plant physiology. Here, he learned that plants were composed of cells, and was introduced to hybridization by artificial fertilization. Upon his return to the monastery, Mendel used the experimental plot and a new green-house to explore the effects of cross-fertilization in plants.

His paper "reports the results of ten years of experimental work on artificial plant hybridization, during which he followed a program designed to test his working hypothesis that hereditary matter is discrete and particulate. Mendel bred and cultivated nearly thirty thousand pea plants, performing careful statistical analyses of the distribution of seven pairs of mutually exclusive seed and plant characteristics -- a manageable number that allowed him to observe all possible combinations of traits" (Grolier Medicine).

The surprising result of Mendel's years of methodical research and systematic statistical analysis was his discovery of the 'Mendelian ratios,' a mathematical expression of the pattern of dominant and recessive hereditary traits, possibly "the most significant single achievement in the history of genetics" (Garrison-Morton).

Related to this discovery was Mendel's recognition of the independence of each set of traits in a hybrid from all other differences in the two parental plants (later known as Mendel's law of independent assortment).

There are only 16 or 17 known extant offprints, of which eight are in institutions. Although Mendel's paper was distributed, in journal form, to 134 scientific institutions in various countries, and the offprint of 40 copies circulated to colleagues and correspondents at the author's discretion, it was not taken note of and fell into obscurity.

In 1900, within a two-month period, there appeared three independent reports by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erich von Tschermak which reached the same conclusions almost simultaneously, each acknowledging that they had been preceded by a virtually unknown monk several decades before.

Subsequent work in the 1930s established that Mendel's laws provided the necessary solution - unknown to Darwin - to understand the mechanism by which evolution by natural selection could work.

Dibner Heralds of Science 35; Garrison-Morton 222; Grolier/Horblit 73a; Grolier Medicine 74; PMM 356a; Stafleu 5818; Norman 1489. For census of copies, see F. Weiling, "Funf weitere sonderdrucke der 'Versuche uber Pflanzen-Hybriden' J.G. Mendels Aufgetaucht" in Folia Mendeliana, 19:257-263, 1984 (identifying 13 copies).

Octavo (228 x 147 mm). 47pp. (Insignificant marginal stain to title-page and second leaf, faint creasing at top corner at end.) Contemporary plain yellow paper wrappers over grey-paper backstrip (tiny spot and insignificant marginal stain at lower edge to upper wrapper, mild rubbing to backstrip); green clamshell box.

Provenance: Christie's, 13 July 2016, lot 177

Acquired at that auction by the current owner

Heyy, so basically I just need help with something simple, what is the law of Independent assortment in a dihybrid cross? And how is that important in a dihybrid cross?

And why is sample size important? Is it because from my understanding so far, it reduces random chance, which in turn , having a larger sample size means that you get more reliable and accurate results?

Highlights

•Total of 37,063 structural variant-human trait associations in 467,152 UK Biobank genomes

•Rare structural variants show a strong effect on human phenotypes and plasma proteins

•Overall, 34.9% of the trait-associated SVs overlap functional genomic regions

•Multi-ancestry meta-analysis identifies SVs associated with disease across ancestries

Summary

Structural variants (SVs) are large (>50 base pairs) genomic rearrangements that can significantly influence human phenotypes, yet their contribution to health and disease remains undercharacterized. We conducted a phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) of 1.6 million SVs identified in whole-genome sequencing data from 467,152 UK Biobank participants, across 13,322 binary, 2,018 quantitative, and 2,923 plasma protein traits. Of these, 82.25% of SVs were outside the detectable range of prior copy-number variant studies. Protein quantitative trait loci analysis linked 3,467 SVs to 1,690 proteins, with effects dependent on SV type and location. In SV-PheWAS, we detected 28,184 associations with human health outcomes. Notably, we uncovered rare SVs with strong phenotypic effects. Furthermore, we show that at known genome-wide association study loci, 32.21% of associated SVs overlapped functional genomic regions. This study underscores the underestimated role of SVs in human genetics and their potential to advance understanding of human biology and drug discovery.

Why do modern Central Italians have only 2%-3% WHG while ancient Romans had over 10% ? Does this mean ancient Italics are only 20% - 25% of the ancestry of Central Italians ? And why do Central Italians have about as much steppe ancestry as ancient Italics at the same time ? What source could have raised it after it decreased in Imperial Rome age, whithout adding some WHG ?

Italic farmers repopulating the cities from the rural areas after the germanic invaders destroyed them does not work because Italic farmers would have been close to ancient Italics and would have over 10% WHG while having under 30% steppe ancestry. Germanic invaders had no genetic impact southward of Tuscany, they do have pretty high WHG, and they are the reason North Italians are at 5% - 9% WHG and Tuscans themselves have still a bit higher than 3%.

It looks like WHG genes were selected out of the pool naturally like Neanderthals genes over the millennia, or alternatively were diluited by Imperial Age new comers from Middle East, and then arrived in Italy some unknown steppe source with no WHG.

At the end, ancient Italics resemble more modern Iberians than Italians by ancestry, because of their higher WHG. In Italy only Sardinians have equally high WHG, but obviously they lack the 20% - 30% steppe ancestry ancient Italics had.

i just found this about genetic distance in the website abkut whos closes to these filipino population when i was looking from the website im really confused and not sure about this

I am applying to this PhD student ship and idk if my answer is too vague or not specific enough. The character limit (1500) is not letting me say much so I said this:

What motivates and excites you about pursuing a career in research? Tell us about the area you would like to pursue your PhD in and why?

As a population geneticist and computational biologist, I aim to integrate genetics with linguistics, geography, and history to understand how human populations spread, how culture and biology interacted through movement and contact, and how this shaped genetic structure, selection and variation over time.

This focus grew from my undergraduate research with Dr xxx, where I led an independent project on the spatio-temporal population genetics of xxx, a region of deep admixture among modern humans and, recent evidence suggests, hominins. When my local ancestry inference methods failed to separate Eurasian populations, I turned to ancient DNA analysis. What seemed to be the end of my project showed me that modern populations are poor proxies for ancestral ones, and that even advanced methods can obscure complex histories of migration and admixture. What I first saw as a barrier became a corridor to the career I hope to pursue.

That shift in thinking is what I hoped to pass on as co-founder of the xxx Machine Learning Student Interest Group, giving talks on broadening how we think about methods of ancestry inference to help underclassmen make the same leap in how they see the field, something I hope to keep doing as a professor and scientist.

I now want to expand my questions to the genealogical analysis of ancient populations and archaic hominins, and to developing methods that model past populations directly, to understand the genomic history that shaped human genetics across time and space.

For context this is an ancient dna lab

Please help a confused first timer 😭😭

Yes there are definitely more pressing issues on this planet than looking worse. However I feel that everyone in their formative years should be encouraged or even pushed to develop the best habits possible, while curbing and stopping bad habits in order to ensure they grow up to be the best looking version of themselves. These bad habits include things like poor posture, mouth breathing, predominately soft food diet etc that all may (some maybe more than others I must add) manifest through epigenetics in an undeveloped looking face.

With how much looks matter now especially towards dating I feel like this should be at the forefront of every parents mind if they are looking to have children. I personally feel that epigentics has negatively affected my appearance, when I look at baby pictures of myself age <5 years old I have a well developed wider face appearance with good forward growth. Proof of my base good genetics in regards to looks are shown through my parents and extended family .However when I look back at my habits growing up it makes sense as to why I never developed properly. I was eating mostly soft foods causing an overbite that later also turned into a cross bite causing asymmetry, I had developed forward head posture which may have contributed to mouth breathing and may have elongated my face shape. I don't look terrible, especially without acne just feel I haven't reached my genetic potential

All previously mentioned things could easily be remedied with the proper foresight, and the benefits of which are profound and lifelong, not only are you better looking as a result but you are also healthier as well. Of course there are somethings that may be out of ones control such as a tongue tie for instance (which causes mouth breathing) may need surgery to be removed, but that is an easy fix, there are other harder ones i'm sure but most could likely be remedied. Of course there's also the issue of children being stubborn, I for one was and its likely that if these good habits were presented to me, it'd be unlikely id follow them on a consistent basis due to ignorance, so since every one is different it may require many different solutions to which falls on the parents.

Of course there may be another reason unrelated to all of this for my current unfortunate appearance. Despite establishing previously that I have good genetics my parents did have me at an older than typical age. My Dad was mid forties and mom late 30's. Though crucially my Dad while good looking especially for his current age, does smoke, drink and eats a relatively poor diet all potentially affecting sperm quality. So perhaps a fathers habits before conception should also seriously be taken into account before reproducing. Though while this is true, as previously mentioned I looked perfectly fine as a little kid so this may not be as likely in my case unless these things show up later in life, though i'm not knowledgeable enough to make a decisive claim of whether that is likely or not.

In short while not all may agree that looks are fundamental to a happy life, few will argue that health isn't and so serious efforts into spreading awareness of the negative affects of poor development should be taken into consideration. One particular habit which may seem harmless is primarily eating soft foods as a child. A potential consequence of which is a narrower weaker jaw, which in turn causes tooth crowding, not only negatively affecting appearance but health too.

Given that the EEFs were present in northern latitudes in Europe for thousands of years, is there any consensus on regional variations among these groups, i.e. did some groups have red hair, blue eyes etc or were all groups typical of the usual images we see of EEFs?

Hi everyone, I have a background in genetics (bachelor in biomedical science, majored in medical genomics). I graduated 2 years ago and have been trying to find a role even remotely related to my field to understand where I want to go from here (which hasn’t been successful sadly).

Before my undergrad I was so interested in research. However most of my degree was dying Covid, which resulted in pretty much all of the lab component to be online - aka I didn’t get a chance for much hands on practical experience.

Im currently working in management in a public hospitals and I really am not enjoying it. And I’ve been actively trying to look for what I want to do long term career wise and subsequently what further studies I would need to complete for that.

I really enjoy helping people, and working completely autonomous roles have made me realise that I don’t want to be locked in a room alone for most of my day. I LOVE LOVE LOVE and thrive on reading and finding out the ‘why’. I love discussing it with people who are in the same field- it fuels me!! My strongest suit is biology and I do struggle with maths and computers.

Living in a country that’s not my home country, has made me realise that I would also like to earn good money (and i understand that money isn’t everything, but after living paycheck to paycheck, I would ideally want to live somewhat comfortably and do all that I can for my family too. And for that reason I am looking for a career where I will earn 100K+ relatively quickly (not immediately I know, I’m ambitious but not delusional haha) and not after 5-6 years of experience (my further studies will also result in substantial student loans).

I’m not sure I’ve come across anything that has ticked most of the things I would like out of a career. I don’t see myself working bench side for years and years. I have looked at MSL but I think I would like to keep it as an option much later in my career (as it will require a very strong and extensive portfolio). I looked at Patent attorney and as lucrative as the pay is, i don’t think I will enjoy it. I’ve looked at Genetic Counselor, but I’m not certain how good the job opportunities and the pay is in Australia (where I am currently and hoping to migrate to permanently) - I do like a lot of aspects about a GC tho.

Another thing that really worries me is that the possibility that I will have to leave Australia for a while before I MAY be able to permanently migrate here, is very REAL. And I don’t want to go into further studies here for a career path that might have a great future here, and if and when I have to relocate somewhere else (temp or permanently), I end up having no prospects in another country.

Anywho, I apologise for all the ramble, but if anyone has any ideas about roles that you think might suit me, with all that I have mentioned, please let me know. I love genetics and I love biology and I love people and I want to start with my career journey asap.

Thank you all so so much for reading!!

Hi! I'm finishing an MSc in bioinformatics at a Canadian university and am really not sure what I want to do next. I'm currently doing dry lab genetics research and enjoy the coding work, but I wish it was more social and I don't find the phenotype I'm working on that interesting (although I've heard that a Master's is mainly about acquiring the skills and less so about finding and working on *the* phenotype you're most interested in).

This past year, I've been trying to figure out if I want to do a phd or not and I have a few options:

1. Stay in the same lab. (The "easy" option, I'd get a stipend, could travel to conferences, and would have a secure "job" for the time being; but I'd probably work on things that don't interest me that much and aren't that fulfilling for me.)
2. Go to a different lab. (Where? I'm interested in psychiatric / behavioural / personality genetics and am a citizen of the EU, Canada, and the US. not super keen on the US, i like the work life balance in Europe more, but i have family in Canada.) (Also aware that if I want to start a phd in 2027 I would need to start now or last month to find supervisors / apply to programs.)
3. Go into industry. (What jobs are there? What are they like?)

Another issue is that although I find the above genetics fields interesting, I'm not sure if I would actually like working in them, if that makes sense? I've also been looking into environmental / climate change / conservation stuff and have been thinking about going into that too (like analyses of environmental DNA for example). But again, I'm not sure if I would actually like working in this area, and I also have no experience in it really. (This has also been a bigger life issue of trying to figure out what I'm actually interested in and what I want to do with my life, but I don't think I can get help with that from a reddit forum lol)

If anyone has any insights or advice that would be greatly appreciated!

Additionally, if anyone has any recommendations for good unis / phd programs for the genetics fields above that would be great. I've found some interesting ones at Karolinska Institutet, Boulder university in Colorado, and King's College London (not a UK citizen so very expensive which sucks), but there may be more I'm missing. As well, I would like a program where I can take courses to get a better / more well-rounded genetics education because I feel like I haven't really gotten that in my background (BSc in computer science), but it seems like the most important thing is the supervisor and if they're doing work you find interesting, have grants, and have an active lab.

Lastly, I'm aware that I could look up and figure out a lot of these things on my own, but I would really appreciate talking to people about these things and getting some advice from people either in these fields or who know more about stuff than I do.

Thank you!

An important story has been published on genetic research gone wrong. Here are some highlights from the article:

"Seven days after the girl’s medical team infused trillions of viruses carrying the recipe for the base editor into her spinal fluid, she died of a severe immune reaction linked to the therapy, Science and Retraction Watch can now reveal."

"Leading the effort was Zilong Qiu, a neuroscientist at the university’s brain center, the Songjiang Research Institute. At the time, in late March 2025, Qiu was one of several researchers around the world vying to push base editors—a more precise form of the powerful gene editor CRISPR—into custom treatments for children with rare diseases. One month earlier, KJ Muldoon, an infant with a life-threatening metabolic disorder, had quietly received his first intravenous infusion of one such treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia."

"Four of the experts Science asked to assess the research, including one of the original reviewers of the Nature manuscript, expressed concerns about how well the primate proof-of-concept study was conducted. The submitted paper had no control samples to show the stain was selectively highlighting the gene editor."

hello! I'm a current college sophomore looking into future career paths since i probably need to start specializing soon. My top two interests are toxicology and genetics. So i'm asking yall and the toxicology people the same/similar questions to compare and see which one fits me better!

1. i'm currently majoring in biology with a minor in statistics. is this ideal or should i change my major/minor? i'm also considering a chemistry minor instead bc i currently have a B/C average in Calc 2 (75% avg on exams)

2. Is there a lot of job opportunities for this career field (Midwest USA)? Is the earning potential high without going to med school? (i have vasovagal syncope and faint like a goat when i see/lose blood lol)

3. Is your school path more application or memorization? is your job the same?

4. Do you enjoy your job? Do you like the work-life balance?

5. (genetics specific) Do you do a lot of hands on research, or is it more patient assessment? I want to go into fertility and parental type genetics, and help people have healthy babies, whether their own blood or not! I also am interested in genetic testing for carriers and mutations that could be passed to offspring, or spontaneous mutations in general. (i am very pro-adoption, those kids need homes too! why spend a few grand for a baby you have to pop out if you can give a lonely already existing baby a home?)

If you read this far, thank you!! I'm excited to hear back from those experienced in the field.

And, when did you become interested in this?

Teen's interest is biology. He spends a huge portion of his time researching the topics discussed in this group.

Thank you :)

African genomes contain more genetic variation than populations on any other continent¹

I am confused by this fact. If we imagine an unsupervised PCA chart of all humans, does this imply that a given unadmixed subsaharan population has a chance of clustering more closely to a Papuan islander or a Han Chinese person than to some other, distant subsaharan population?

I have been reading about genetic clusters, and Rosenberg (2002) found that, at k = 5, the clusters resembled these groups:

• Sub-Saharan Africa;
• Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia;
• East Asia;
• Oceania;
• the Americas.

On the Wikipedia article Human Genetic Clustering, however, I notice that seem take issue with the HGDP-CEPH panel that Rosenberg used, and found the following, somewhat absurd, hypothetical:

...arbitrarily invoking five population clusters in an attempt to test the genomic validity of scientific racism instead yields three "races" within Africa, one encompassing most of Europe and mainland Asia, and one encompassing Australia, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands.

I am not sure what the editor is trying to argue here. I realise that Wikipedia is not necessarily the best source for this subject, but the claim strikes me as potentially misleading. Is it suggesting that a PCA plot of all human populations, using the first two principal components, would reveal three distinct sub-Saharan African clusters alongside two broader clusters encompassing the rest of the world?

My instinct is that it is some sort of genealogical red herring and not a real genetic result.

Rosenberg NA, Pritchard JK, Weber JL, Cann HM, Kidd KK, Zhivotovsky LA, Feldman MW. Genetic structure of human populations. Science. 2002 Dec 20;298(5602):2381-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1078311. PMID: 12493913.