Greetings after a week of vacation!
 

Bet you never saw those words in that particular combination. Here’s the story:

Recently two scientists put together a new hypothesis about the evolution of the female orgasm. They argue that female mammals had orgasms, or at least precursors of them, 150 million years ago. And it started out with a function that was lost in our ancestors long ago. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, August 12, 2016” →

It’s a little disturbing to realized that this is my last newsletter of July. Time is moving too fast. But at least I have accumulated a few things to offer you from the past week…
 

I’m forever grateful that the good folks at Stat let me go a bit crazy in writing about my genome. Now at last the whole three-part beast is online, complete with my Neanderthal genes and inner viruses. If you haven’t read it yet, now you can just binge through it like a night of “Breaking Bad.” Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, July 29, 2016” →

For the past few months, I’ve been traveling through my genome with the guidance of a couple dozen scientists. On Monday, Stat published the first part of my narrative of the experience. You can read it here.

As part of the package, I’ve also set up a parallel web site for the scientific nuts and bolts. I’ve posted some of the analysis that researchers produced while poring over my genome. And you can find the raw data of my genome there, too (including files of variants, and the original, gigantic BAM file). I hope it will be of use to teachers who want to show students how to make sense of a genome. I will add more materials as the next two parts of the series are published.

This week I also talked about the experience a few times. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, July 15, 2016” →