Springer Nature

In the past, there had been a school of thought that looked at evolution linearly — that is, you could in theory draw a line among mammals as they evolved, and so, say, rodent brains would basically be less evolved primate brains. That turns out not to be true; evolution is much more like a branching tree, and each branch then goes on to develop independently, sometimes in parallel. Some groups of animals such as primates can evolve features of their brains that other groups simply don’t have. And now, with advanced DNA sequencing, scientists have been able to determine which groups of mammals are more closely related than others, and so they’ve figured out that, for instance, tree shrews and flying lemurs are more closely related to primates than rodents are.

In this episode we explore the recent Neuropsychopharmacology paper: ”Evolution of prefrontal cortex"

In this episode of ModPath CHAT, Dr. George J Netto reviews five of the highly cited manuscripts that were published in Modern Pathology in 2021.

There is a growing body of evidence showing that excessive early media use is detrimental to children's physical and mental health. As such, the World Health Organization guidelines suggest that screen time for infants should be limited to a maximum of one hour per day. However, with the growing ubiquity of digital media, it is thought that preschoolers are exposed to more than two hours of screen time. With the rapidly changing nature of digital media use, it is not yet clear how this is affecting different aspects of early childhood development. The evidence to date has been increasingly mixed.

In this episode, we speak to medical student Clarissa Schwarzer who is doing her doctoral thesis on early childhood development and media use by children and mothers at the Leipzig Research Center for Civilization Diseases.

Join Prof. Anne Yoder (Duke University), Dr Mario dos Reis (Queen Mary University of London) and Dr George Tiley (Duke University) as they discuss their recent work looking at mutation rates in the gray mouse lemur. It’s a story that takes us from a house party to the bleeding edge of genetics research, with a detour through the scandalous sex lives of mouse lemurs.

In this episode we explore the recent Heredity paper: “Pedigree-based and phylogenetic methods support surprising patterns of mutation rate and spectrum in the gray mouse lemur” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-021-00446-5

Identification of molecular alterations in NTRK 1-3 has become increasingly important with the emergence of histology-agnostic, US Food and Drug Administration-approved, effective inhibitors. The host discusses with Dr. Jaclyn Hechtman, director of clinical diagnostic development at Neogenomics, her practical insights on how testing for NTRK fusion can best be implemented and communicated within the multidisciplinary healthcare team.

As cardiovascular disease has many known genetic components, a team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine created a panel of genes associated with cardiovascular disease they call HeartCare. David Murdock, previously the assistant director of the clinical lab at Baylor College of Medicine’s Human Genome Sequencing Center and now a lab director at Invitae, states “we thought that by looking at genetic causes of cardiovascular disease in an adult population, that could really help us to push forward genetic testing in adults in general”.

On this month’s GenePod, David Murdock and Eric Venner, director of clinical informatics at Baylor College of Medicine’s Human Genome Sequencing Center, discuss results and implications of the HeartCare gene panel testing of over 700 individuals from Baylor cardiology clinics.

Caffeine administration has been associated with reduced rates of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) in preterm neonates but the effect of caffeine on renal oxygenation is unknown.

In this episode, we meet this month's highlighted Early Career Investigator, Dr. Matthew Harer from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He has been investigating the potential use of Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS), a non-invasive means of continuously measuring tissue oxygenation to assess the effects of caffeine on renal oxygenation, in the hope that caffeine might one day be used to prevent and even treat AKI.

The host is joined by Dr. Andres Acosta from the Brigham and Women Hospital. Dr Acosta discusses, on behalf of a distinguished group of coauthors, their recent somewhat provocative modern pathology publication proposing that mesenchymal neoplasms of the prostate are morphologically and molecularly heterogeneous lesion that include neoplasms that harbor genetic aberrations seen in specific mesenchymal tumors arising in other anatomic sites, such as soft tissue and the uterus.

Can we really understand ancient shifts in oceanic currents by looking at the population genetics of migratory species? Find out in this episode, as Dr Jurjan van der Zee (University of Groningen) discusses his search for a warm-water corridor between the Atlantic and Indian oceans in the genomes of green turtles.

Star-shaped cells called astrocytes are the most abundant cells to be found in the human brain. In the past, they’d been thought to play a supporting role to neurons, such as providing metabolic support, but recently they’re also emerging as stars of information processing. They can respond to neurotransmitters and release neuroactive substances that then affect synaptic transmission and plasticity. Michelle Corkrum is a child neurology resident at Columbia University and is one of the authors of a recent review paper on the links between astrocytes and dopamine signalling. The review looks back at the history of research in this field, going back decades. Listen in to learn more!