DO DOCTORS HAVE A WEIGHT PROBLEM? Studies show that physicians, no less than members of the general population, show a marked bias against people who carry extra pounds. In the examination room, such attitudes can cause real harm, as physicians tend to spend less time with these patients and can overlook their non-weight-related symptoms. Fatima […] The post Seeing Past the Scale appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more

MORNINGS STARTS AT 3 A.M. for Shawn Radcliffe. Without setting an alarm, he wakes up like clockwork in the pre-dawn hours, does some writing and then some yoga, sometimes followed by a run. “I really like the mornings,” Radcliffe says. “I’m alone and it is a beautiful time.” He goes to bed between 9 and […] The post The Insomnia Genes appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more

IN NOVEMBER, THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCED that it would simplify the approval process for direct-to-consumer genomic tests. This move is likely to boost the number of people who get at least part of their genome sequenced—a number that may reach as high as 2 billion by the year 2025, according to a 2015 […] The post The Walk-In Genome Clinic appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more

Harland Winter, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, clearly remembers the day in 2010 when he received an email from Mauro Toporovski, a pediatrician in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Toporovski sought Winter’s advice about an infant girl named Nechama who had a mysterious case of severe, intractable diarrhea. Although Toporovski had tried switching her from […] The post An Errant Gene appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more

The Human Genome Project completed the first draft human reference genome in 2001. That started a new epoch in medicine, one that could better trace genetic differences and the roots of diseases. Yet the map established by the Human Genome Project still has its limitations, not least of which is that some 70% of the […] The post From Genome to Pangenome appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more

In 2003, the Human Genome Project created widespread excitement when it completed a map of human DNA. That moonshot also, indirectly, kicked off an era of unprecedented global collaborations. Dozens of other efforts soon got underway, each one trying to comprehensively map a dimension of the human body and make that information freely available to […] The post An Atlas of Atlases appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more

Genomic research has led to one of medicine’s golden eras, a time of discovering gene variants that lead to disease and ushering in powerful, tailored treatments. But this progress largely comes from research on people of European ancestry, who account for about 80% of participants in genomic studies, though they only make up 16% of […] The post Justice for Genes appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more

A person’s bacteria, yeast and other tiny companions have, in recent decades, gotten an image boost. A thriving microbiome is now understood as a sign of good health, and the market for “probiotics” is thriving, though concerns have been raised about the safety and effectiveness of many over-the-counter products. But what if science could add […] The post Should We Monkey with the Microbiome? appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more

An axolotl is hard to call cute, exactly. Paired off in rows of numbered tanks in a Harvard lab, the pale salamanders look out with pinprick eyes, and feathery red gills wave at each end of their wide smiles. Their primary appeal to scientists such as Jessica Whited, an assistant professor with the Harvard Stem […] The post The Search for a Regeneration Switch appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more

THE PEDIGREE CHART OF FAMILY 709 tells a grim story, with black diamonds indicating the death by suicide of 27 distant cousins across the branches of an eight-generation family tree. In another chart, for Family 553615, black diamonds mark the suicides of 81 descendants of a single couple who lived in the early 1800s. Of […] The post Knots in the Family Tree appeared first on Proto Magazine ..read more