Daily Archives: April 20, 2022

SANTA CRUZ After nearly 40 years of work, scientists have finally completed sequencing the human genome and UC Santa Cruz was at the center of it all.

The completion of the sequence gives an idea for the baseline of all human genetics. Humans are 99.9% identical genetically, according to UCSC Genomics Institute Director David Haussler. Therefore, while scientists have only sequenced the DNA of a human once, anyone can look at it and get a near indistinguishable snapshot of their own genetic code.

UCSC Chancellor Emeritus Robert Sinsheimer embarked on the quest in 1985. Karen Miga, an assistant professor in biomolecular engineering, completed the task at the end of March.

Its the greatest honor of my life, she said. What it turned out to be was this amazing walking with a whole group of people towards a historic moment. I feel lucky to be a part of that legacy.

The former chancellor had just finished sequencing the genome of a virus, which inspired him to gather a team to sequence the human genome in the mid-80s. However, that task would be much harder than the one he just completed.

The virus Sinsheimer sequenced only has a sequence of a few thousand DNA patterns, which is miniscule compared to the genome of human, according to Haussler. The human genome is comprised of 3 billion DNA sequences.

Haussler likened the task to a jigsaw puzzle, except this puzzle has 3 billion pieces and a corner piece is not as easy to find.

It gives you a feel for how hard this problem of putting together all the little snippets of DNA into the right orientation and figure out what the actual chromosome looks like how hard that problem is, said Haussler, who worked on the original Human Genome Project.

In fact, the puzzle is so complex that scientists from 20 different countries joined forces to sequence the human genome. That team became known as the Human Genome Project, and it officially launched in 1990.

Those scientists spent the next 10 years working on sequencing the human genome. Along the way, the Human Genome Project even faced competition against a private company, Solara Genomics, that sought to accomplish the same task but also find a way to monetize it.

That competition lead to further innovations in technology, which gave researchers the power to sequence the genome faster. While technology advanced, the task at hand still remained daunting.

That work was incredibly difficult because the genome was so huge and the technology could only read 1,000 bases at a time, Haussler said.

To put that into perspective, the first chromosome in the human genome is 250 million bases long, Haussler noted. Subsequent chromosomes continue to get smaller, but there are still an additional 22 chromosomes adding up to more than 3 billion bases.

However, in July 2000, researchers at UCSC accomplished what seemed unachievable. A student at the university wrote a program that helped the Human Genome project complete a first draft of the sequence by July 7, 2000.

That was incredibly important to us because now scientists got a glimpse of our human heritage, Haussler said. In fact, regular people got a glimpse at our human heritage without having to pay a subscription.

That first draft displayed roughly 90% of the complete human genome. The remaining 10% of the human genome was just out of grasp with the state of technology at the time. As a result, many people in the project gave up, conceding that there is plenty of information for modern medicine in the 90% of the genome sequenced.

Technological advancements and perseverance would later help Miga, who was a grad researcher during the original project, catalogue the remaining 10% of the human genome.

Miga formally launched her international consortium in 2019, co-led by Evan Eichler from the University of Washington and Adam Phillippy from the National Institute of Health. Unlike the Human Genome Project, this consortium was independently funded and achieved its success on the free time of each of the associates.

Its completely grassroots. This is just a bunch of scientists from around the world using their spare time, using their own money that decided that this was something that needed to happen, Miga said.

The team really leaned into their research as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world.

While many people were learning to make banana bread, Miga and her team were completing the jigsaw puzzle of human genomics. However, what was left over from the Human Genome Project were some of the hardest pieces of the puzzle.

It was really difficult to sequence these, put them together or just reconstruct the puzzle, Miga said. When youre putting a puzzle together and you have all the blue-sky pieces that look the same, thats what we were up against.

But of course, the hardest pieces to solve were some of the most important parts of human genetics. The parts of the human genome that Miga cataloged are some of the fastest-changing genetics through history, Haussler said. They are also parts of genetics that are vital to human life.

The parts of the genome Miga focused on focused on the centromere of cells, which makes sure cells separate properly during mitosis. When this part of the cell does not function properly, it leads to cancer and birth defects.

With this portion of the genome sequenced, scientists can begin to work on sequencing cancer genomes, which will lead to further advancements in cancer research.

This is the first time we can study the sequences in these important regions, Miga said.

But that is not where this project ends. With the complete sequencing of the human genome which Miga and her finished in roughly three years scientists now look towards the pangenome project.

That project aims to further diversify the information in the sequenced genome. The idea is to represent at least 350 diverse people from around the world, Miga said. While scientists are celebrating the completion of a single human genome, it does not capture the full diversity of human genetics, she added.

We all have our own ties to human history. These variants distributed around the world give us an indication of how humans have migrated for the past 1,000 years, she said. Were hoping this project will identify even more of those complicated regions we know are present but havent been able to study in the past.

More here:
UCSC researcher completes human genome sequencing - The Mercury News

This article was originally published here

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2022 Jun 6;377(1852):20200427. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0427. Epub 2022 Apr 18.

ABSTRACT

The Apportionment of Human Diversity stands as a noteworthy intervention, both for the field of human population genetics as well as in the annals of public communication of science. Despite the widespread uptake of Lewontins conclusion that racial classification is of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance, the biomedical research community continues to grapple with whether and how best to account for race in its work. Nowhere is this struggle more apparent than in the latest attempts to translate genetic associations with complex disease risk to clinical use in the form of polygenic risk scores, or PRS. In this perspective piece, we trace current challenges surrounding the appropriate development and clinical application of PRS in diverse patient cohorts to ongoing difficulties deciding which facets of population structure matter, and for what reasons, to human health. Despite numerous analytical innovations, there are reasons that emerge from Lewontins work to remain sceptical that accounting for population structure in the context of polygenic risk estimation will allow us to more effectively identify and intervene on the significant health disparities which plague marginalized populations around the world. This article is part of the theme issue Celebrating 50 years since Lewontins apportionment of human diversity.

PMID:35430888 | DOI:10.1098/rstb.2020.0427

Originally posted here:
Polygenic risk, population structure and ongoing difficulties with race in human genetics - DocWire News

April 13, 2022

In genomic studies, researchers examine the DNA of a population to understand the influence of genetics on health and disease. Though genomic studies have been common for more than a decade, most participants in these studies have been of European descent.

Dr. Lindsay Fernndez-Rhodes

Dr. Misa Graff

A new study led by Lindsay Fernndez-Rhodes, PhD, assistant professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State and 2016 doctoral graduate of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and Mariaelisa Graff, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School, has shown that increasing the diversity of genomic samples can improve researchers ability to identify important genetic markers for health conditions.

One of the goals of conducting genomic studies is to develop precision medicine, which is the delivery of the exact treatment or medication that a person needs exactly when they need it.

Precision medicine is a great idea, but it only works if we study the full diversity of the populations that we may see in the clinic, Fernndez-Rhodes explained. We cannot treat people with precision if we do not have the relevant data. Previous large-scale genomic studies have largely overlooked Hispanic/Latino people. Since the United States is becoming increasingly diverse, our ability to provide appropriate medical treatment will suffer if the gaps in our genomic data are not addressed.

Fernndez-Rhodes and Graff were joined by more than 100 researchers from around the world to form the Hispanic/Latino Anthropometry Consortium. The consortium pools research expertise and genetic data on people of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity in order to bolster the diversity in genomic studies.

Dr. Kari North

Our consortium fills a major research gap in genomic studies. Inclusion of individuals of diverse ancestral backgrounds is imperative, both from the perspective of scientific necessity and equity, said Kari E. North, PhD, professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School, one of the consortiums multiple principal investigators, and co-author of this research. By embracing diversity, we are discovering novel genomic associations and moving the field forward.

In anew article in Human Genetics and Genomics Advances, Fernndez-Rhodes and Graff led the examination of genomic data from more than 70,000 Hispanic/Latino individuals. The data were compiled from 18 smaller studies and combined with two other consortia to bring the total sample to over 470,000 adults. To date, the article is the largest published genomic study of body measures in Hispanic/Latino individuals.

The researchers identified regions of the genome that are associated with three body measurements: body mass index (BMI), height, and waste-to-hip ratio. BMI, a ratio of weight to height, is the most common assessment of obesity used by physicians. Waist-to-hip ratio indicates where on their bodies people are carrying excess weight.

Consortium researchers identified 42 previously unidentified regions of the human genome related to BMI, height and waist-to-hip ratio. These traits have been examined in previous genomic studies, but the unique ancestry and experiences of Hispanic/Latino people made the regions easier to identify using the consortiums combined data.

The newly identified regions of the genome may help scientists understand how people grow, develop and perhaps most importantly for human health develop obesity. Significantly, the regions appear to be relevant to the health and development of all people, regardless of their ancestry. The researchers say that the results indicate a widespread need to build larger, more diverse data sources.

There is a very large gap between who is experiencing obesity and who is being included in genomic studies. The consortium is working to close one part of that gap. Hopefully, this is the first step of many toward increased diversity in genomic studies, said Fernndez-Rhodes. Researchers need to ensure that all people are represented in our scientific knowledge base. We need to harness the power of diversity to uncover the genes that pattern human health and disease.

Read the original release from Penn State.

Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.

Read more:
Greater diversity in genetic studies helps researchers uncover new insights - UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Advances in genomic technologies continue to expand the possibilities of PGT. In a preclinical research study recently published in Nature Medicine, scientists from Silicon Valley-based genetic testing companies have examined the potential of using PGT to predict complex polygenically inherited conditions in human embryos. While the authors present interesting data, Mina Popovic and Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes from ESHREs SIG Stem Cells here report that the study raises profound medical, technical and ethical concerns.

Coupled to technical developments in embryo genomic sequencing, advances in complex trait genetics and computational genomics have now enabled the introduction of PGT-P for embryo selection. Nevertheless, the predictive value, clinical utility and ethical implications of this test remain highly controversial. Given the lack of compelling evidence for its clinical application, several scientific societies, including ESHRE and the European Society of Human Genetics, have recently released statements against the use of PGT-P in clinical practice.(1,2)

Despite these concerns, commercial genetic testing companies, including Genomic Prediction (https://www.lifeview.com), Orchid Health (https://www.orchidhealth.com) and MyOme (https://myome.com), have already introduced the technology to the market, offering PGT-P to prospective parents for a variety of complex diseases all in one test. Marketed as the most comprehensive preimplantation genetic test available today, PGT-P is now being used to screen embryos for their genetic predisposition to cancers, diabetes, heart conditions, schizophrenia, Alzheimers, as well as other adult-onset diseases. Remarkably, the selection of embryos based on non-medical conditions - such as cognitive ability, education and household income - have also been proposed, with a tenuous health benefit already assigned to some of these traits.

The technology behind PGT-P draws on polygenic risk scores, derived from large-scale genome-wide association studies.(3) These studies employ high-throughput genomic technologies to scan thousands of genomes obtained from different individuals to uncover genetic variants, predominantly single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), that are significantly associated with a particular complex trait. Such data can be used to generate polygenic risk scores which summarise a set of genetic variants in an individual to evaluate their risk of developing a certain condition. Polygenic risk scores have inherently gained intense interest for preventative medicine, to improve diagnoses and select optimal treatment for a variety of common diseases. Applying this concept in the context of preimplantation genetics has thus enabled PGT-P. Nevertheless, very few studies have examined the utility of polygenic risk scores for embryo selection and ultimately the extrapolation of such data to an IVF embryo cohort remains problematic.(4)

In their recent study, Kumar and colleagues from MyOme combined molecular and statistical techniques to infer the whole genome sequence of 110 embryos, using parental genome sequencing and embryo genotyping.(5) They suggest that this method, known as whole genome reconstruction, can be used to more accurately predict susceptibility to 12 common polygenic conditions in human embryos, including cancers, cardiometabolic and autoimmune diseases. The study used samples from couples who had previously had PGT-A or PGT-M, while DNA was also available from ten children who had prior PGT. The authors validated their technique by comparing the reconstructed genome and polygenic predictions for the embryos to those of the corresponding children. Genome-wide prediction accuracy ranged from 98-99%.

The findings suggest that whole genome reconstruction improves the accuracy of risk predictions by comprehensively profiling embryo genomes, whilst overcoming known technical limitations associated with the genetic analysis of small amounts of embryonic DNA. The paper touches on challenges regarding the statistical validity of polygenic risk scores for evaluating embryos in this setting, and discusses some ethical aspects of the procedure. Nevertheless, many questions remain unanswered.

Alongside the paper, Nature Medicine published two commentaries highlighting the technical, clinical and ethical dilemmas associated with PGT-P.(6,7) These questions are complex and wide-ranging, and while it is not possible to give them full justice in this report, they certainly deserve serious attention.(8)

Despite the growing interest in polygenic risk scores in biomedical research, limited guidelines for performing such analyses have ultimately led to inconsistent data and misinterpretations of results. Accordingly, several methodological limitations in prediction accuracy hinder the clinical utility of PGT-P. Ultimately, polygenic risk scores only capture parts of the relevant genetic component of a condition. Indeed, predicting the risk of adult-onset diseases cannot account for changes in environmental or lifestyle factors which might occur over time. Moreover, predictions only provide a relative risk compared to the specific study population they were generated in. As justly mentioned by Kumar and colleagues, polygenic risk scores exhibit limited predictive accuracy when extended to different populations, as they have been largely developed using genome-wide association studies of European ancestry.

Studies have further shown that the potential gain of quantitative traits, such as height or cognitive ability, remains relatively small.(9) In addition, a substantial number of embryos per cycle (>10) is required to increase the prediction accuracy of PGT-P. This is largely unfeasible for many couples undergoing IVF. Moreover, as PGT-P screens for multiple polygenic conditions simultaneously, it vastly complicates embryo selection.

Currently, the complex relationships between genetic variants and traits are not well understood, and it is uncertain whether a lower risk for one condition may in fact increase susceptibility to others. Indeed, PGT-P creates enormous challenges for clinical management and patient counselling. Prospective parents will face difficult decisions as they try to balance risks for multiple conditions. Complicated decision-making surrounding embryo selection may dimmish procreative autonomy, lead to additional cycles of ovarian stimulation, and ultimately elicit unwarranted disposal of viable embryos.

Adequate ethical oversight and societal discussion also remain imperative. Accessibility to the technology, the opportunity for using PGT-P for non-medical individual traits, discrimination and stigmatisation of certain conditions, and drawing attention away from individual responsibilities for managing disease risk, all present legitimate concerns. Yet, research on the perceptions and attitudes towards PGT-P, including those of its consumers, is sorely lacking. In this increasingly complex industry, clinical decision-making must rely on preclinical and clinical studies, controlled trials, as well as longterm followup. Such studies inherently demand time, and remain challenging to perform, particularly in the context of assisted reproduction. Nevertheless, balancing innovation with robust evidence surrounding the effectiveness, safety and ethical implications of newly emerging technologies is becoming more relevant than ever.

1. See https://www.focusonreproduction.eu/article/ESHRE-News-PRS and https://www.eshre.eu/Europe/Position-statements/PRS2. Forzano F, Antonova O, Clarke A, et al. The use of polygenic risk scores in pre-implantation genetic testing: an unproven, unethical practice. Eur J Hum Genet 2021; doi.org/10.1038/s41431-021-01000-x3. Tam V, Patel N, Turcotte M, et al. Benefits and limitations of genome-wide association studies. Nat Rev Genet 2019; 20: 46784. doi.org/10.1038/s41576-019-0127-14. Turley P, Meyer MN, Wang N, et al. Problems with using polygenic scores to select embryos. N Eng J Med 2021; 385: 7886. doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsr21050655. Kumar A, Im K, Banjevic M, et al. Whole-genome risk prediction of common diseases in human preimplantation embryos. Nat Med 2022; 28: 513516.doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01735-06. Gleicher N, Albertini DF, Patrizio P, Orvieto R, Adashi EY. The uncertain science of preimplantation and prenatal genetic testing. Nat Med 2022; 28: 442444. doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01712-77. Johnston J, Matthews LJ. Polygenic embryo testing: understated ethics, unclear utility. Nat Med 2022; 28(3): 446448. doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01743-08. Siermann M, Tuiko O, Vermeesch JR, et al. A review of normative documents on preimplantation genetic testing: Recommendations for PGT-P. Genet Med 2022: S1098-3600(22)00678-5. doi.org/10.1016/j.gim.2022.03.0019. Karavani E, Zuk O, Zeevi D, et al. Screening human embryos for polygenic traits has limited utility. Cell 2019; 179: 1424-1435.e8. doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.10.033

More:
Still doubts over embryo selection based on PGT for polygenic conditions - ESHRE

Did Edward O. Wilson Harvard professor, iconic biologist, champion of global biodiversity promote racist ideas? For years, some scientists have suggested the very question is rooted in smear campaigns and misreadings of Wilsons work. Other scholars have argued that racism and sexism are apparent in Wilsons writing on human evolution.

Since Wilsons death in late December 2021, at the age of 92, the question has been subject to renewed debate, after an opinion piece in Scientific AmericandescribingWilsons dangerous ideas set off a backlash from some scientists.

Now, two separate pairs of researchers, drawing from Wilsons papers at the Library of Congress, have published details of correspondence in which Wilson privately supports a psychologist known for his racist work. It doesnt surprise me at all, said Joseph Graves, Jr., an evolutionary biologist at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University who haswrittenextensivelyabout scientific racism, and who reviewed some of the new archival work before it was published. Whats important about the new research, he added, was coming up with the smoking gun.

Not everyone agrees the new evidence is so definitive, but the revelations promise to prolong the reckoning over Wilsons legacy and to add to an ongoing discussion about how racism and sexism may have shaped entire fields of study.

Wilson may be best known for his widely praised research on ants, and for his push to protect biodiversity. But the scientists work on human evolution has been contested since 1975, when he published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, a sweeping study of the evolution of social behavior in animals. The books final chapter, which aims to consider man in the free spirit of natural history, as though we were zoologists from another planet, touches on the evolutionary origins of language, territoriality, and other behaviors. In the chapter, Wilson wonders whether there could be marked genetic differences between socioeconomic classes. (He concludes theres little evidence thats the case.) And he speculates that some of the differences between human cultures could be rooted in genetic differences, calling for a discipline of anthropological genetics to explore the question further.

Wilson was touching on questions that remain deeply polarizing: To what extent are certain features of human societies, like xenophobia, altruism, or inequality, dictated by our genes? And can some of the complex variation among human groups, from IQ scores to incarceration rates, be explained by genetic differences, rather than by environmental and social forces? Many racist projects from the eugenics movement to Nazism to present-day White nationalism have argued that racial differences have deep genetic roots. Such pseudoscientific ideas continue to fuel popular racist canards, such as theideathat Black people have genes predisposing them to violence.

Today, theres a broad consensus among experts in human evolution that that race is a social construct, not a biological category, and that it is extraordinarily difficult to link specific genes to complex human behaviors. And some researchers and advocates warn that, absent better data, explorations of those questions often just reproduce old stereotypes or offer thin cover for bigoted ideas.

After the publication of Sociobiology, Wilson was subject to fierce criticism, including from some of his Harvard colleagues, who argued he had gotten out ahead of the scientific evidence and that his conclusions about the way biology shapes human behavior veered into dangerous territory.

Wilson pushed back against those charges, arguing that his work had been misunderstood and, in some cases, distorted. (To keep the record straight, I am happy to point out that no justification for racism is to be found in the truly scientific study of the biological basis of social behavior, he wrote in 1981, stressing his belief in a single human nature.) Despite the criticisms, Sociobiology was enormously influential: The book helped launch the field of evolutionary psychology, and it had a profound influence on the study of animal behavior and biological anthropology.

Less than a week after Wilson died, Monica McLemore, a health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, published the op-ed in Scientific American describing Wilsons work as problematic, and calling on scientists to reckon with his legacy. In response, the science blogger Razib Khan wrote anopen letterchallenging the way McLemores piece characterized Wilsons work, including baseless accusations of racism. Dozens of prominent scientists signed the letter.

The open letter pitted a group of mostly White scientists against a Black colleague who had raised concerns about racism. McLemore, who has received threats and hate mail since her piece was published, questioned the judgment of the researchers who signed it. That reputable scientists would be sloppy enough to sign a letter that would bring that kind of hate to my stance in this current moment to me the naivete is huge, she told Undark in a recent Zoom conversation. (Khan did not reply to requests for comment.)

Some of the letters initial signatories retracted their names after learning of Khanspast connectionswith figures associated with white nationalism, including alt-right figurehead Richard Spencer and publisher Ron Unz.

Soon after, Wilsons own connections to the right-wing fringe upended the conversation again.

One pair ofresearchers who surfaced those connections, Howard University evolutionary biologist Stacy Farina and her husband, Matthew Gibbons, began reading sections of Sociobiology while stuck at home during the Covid-19 pandemic. They were taken aback by what they found.

I had read some chapters of Sociobiology as a grad student, said Farina. And theres a lot of really great science in there. Its a very interesting book. And I had no idea that the last chapter had any of that stuff in it. Part of her motivation for digging into Wilsons work, she continued, was a sense of gaps in her own training. I am frustrated with the lack of education about these issues in evolutionary biology.

Later, during a Library of Congress workshop for Howard faculty, Farina asked if the Library had archival material on Wilson. Sure enough, the institution holds his personal papers including boxes of documents related to the sociobiology wars. When she and Gibbons perused the collection, they were drawn to four folders labeled with the name of J. Philippe Rushton, a Canadian psychologist who, starting in the 1980s, published studies arguing that substantial genetic differences existed between racial groups.

Population differences exist in personality and sexual behavior such that, in terms of restraint, Orientals > whites > blacks, begins one 1987 Rushton paperpublished in the Journal of Research in Personality. His work would eventually be dogged by accusations of statistical flaws and ethics violations, and key papers were retracted.

In 2002, Rushton took the helm of the Pioneer Fund, an organization founded in the 1930s to promote eugenics, the idea that humanity can be improved by manipulating which people reproduce. He led the nonprofit until his death in 2012.

On weekends, Farina and Gibbons began returning to the Library of Congress. It was a nice little escape during the pandemic, said Gibbons, who works as a business development specialist for a public health organization. Head out in the morning, go to an early session, grab some lunch, and sort of freak out over what the morning session revealed, race the clock and try to document as much as we could before they kicked us out at the end.

The letters, Farina said, demonstrate a warm relationship between Wilson and the psychologist. In the correspondence, which dates from the 1980s and 90s, Wilson expressed support for Rushtons work, and lamented a stifling culture that, he suggested, had prevented him from speaking more freely, referring in one note to a leftward revival of McCarthyism. When Rushtons university seemed poised to sanction him for academic misconduct, Wilson sent letters in his defense. He also sent letters to drum up support for Rushton from colleagues at Harvard and at the conservativeNational Association of Scholars.

Unbeknownst to Farina and Gibbons, a pair of historians were also exploring the Wilson archive. In 2018, University of Illinois historian of science David Sepkoski began working with Wilsons papers while researching abookon biodiversity. Like Farina and Gibbons, he noticed and gravitated toward the Rushton folders.

Struck by what he was reading, Sepkoski began dropping scanned images of letters into a Dropbox folder he shares with Mark Borrello, a historian of biology at the University of Minnesota. Im sure I called you from the archives, and was like, Youre not gonna believe this, Sepkoski told Borrello during a recent Zoom conversation with Undark. The two began sketching out a book project on Wilson.

The correspondence, Sepkoski and Borrello now say, suggests that Wilson was carefully managing his public persona even as he quietly continued his dispute with his left-wing critics.

Providing comments on one Rushton paper which applied a famous Wilson theory, meant to examine reproductive differences between different species, to argue that Black and non-Black people pursue different reproductive strategies Wilson was effusive. This is a brilliant paper, he wrote, one of the most original and heuristic written on human biology in recent years.

Whether it can even be published in this or some other journal devoted to human sociobiology, Wilson wrote later in his comments, will be a test of our courage and fidelity to objectivity in science.

Earlier this month, spurred by the backlash against McLemore, Farina and Gibbonspublishedtheir findings in Science for the People Magazine, a left-wing outlet linked to the activist group thatprominently opposedWilsons work in the 1970s.

Days later, Sepkoski and Borrello published their ownessayin The New York Review of Books, with more details from the Wilson archives.

The reaction to the letters among the scientific community has been mixed. Some researchers suggested the revelations do not necessitate a substantial reevaluation of Wilsons legacy. Asked about the new letters, sociologist Ullica Segerstrale referred back to her influential 2000 book, Defenders of the Truth, which covers the dispute between Wilson and his antagonists. In thebook, Segerstrale challenges characterizations of Wilson as a racist thinker, and argues that his critics often failed to engage with the actual substance of his work. I stand by my general analysis in that book regarding the thinking and behavior of both E.O. Wilson and Science for the People, she wrote in an email to Undark.

At the blog Why Evolution is True, biostatistician Gregory MayerdescribedFarina and Gibbons findings as small beer. Wilson, he wrote, appeared to be primarily defending Rushtons academic freedom, not endorsing his ideas. To do so does not imply an identity of views, Mayer wrote. In a phone interview, he suggested that historians should focus on more pressing historical topics, such as Wilsons role in the development of a key concept in ecology, rather than his correspondence with a discredited Canadian psychologist.

For other scientists, though, the letters felt significant. Writing for Small Pond Science, a science and teaching blog, biologist Terry McGlynnreflectedon the letters impact. When navigating the whiter parts of the cultural landscape of biology, the general party line has often been that Ed was mostly right about sociobiology, but his ideas had been twisted by racists, and there wasnt anything he could do about that, he wrote.

But, he continued, its indubitable that the party line I have passively received over the decades simply does not comport with reality.

Not everyone found the content of the letters especially surprising. Indeed, close attention to Wilsons work and public statements, some scholars said, already provided ample evidence that he was sympathetic to ideas that most biologists now consider not just morally questionable, but scientifically unfounded.

In 2014, Wilson gave a warm blurb to then-New York Times science journalist Nicholas Wades book A Troublesome Inheritance. The book argues that Black people may be, on average, more impulsive and less hardworking than White or East Asian people, and that basic differences in human society why Haiti is poor, for example, and European countries wealthy are attributable to genetic differences among groups. Inreviews,debates, andpublic statements, experts in human evolution pilloried the book for misrepresenting the science. A notable exception was Wilson, who, in his blurb, praised Wade for exemplifying the virtues of truth without fear and celebrating human genetic diversity.

Thats pretty much out in the open, said Princeton University biological anthropologist Agustn Fuentes, who describes A Troublesome Inheritance as awful, racist, horribly unscientific. What has changed, he said, is the scientific community itself. The field, he said, is really hitting a peak moment of reflection, of engagement with the complexities of racism and sexism, and how its structured some of the basic ideas.

Indeed, a recentpaperin the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, authored by faculty, staff, and graduate students in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC-Santa Cruz, is titled Anti-racist interventions to transform ecology, evolution, and conservation biology departments. Recently, biologists have mobilized to change species names that honorConfederate officersand other figures with troubling histories.

Even just in the last two or three years, it feels like something has shifted, said Ambika Kamath, a behavioral and evolutionary ecologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Among other factors driving that change, she said, is that biologists from more diverse backgrounds are coming into the field.

Kamath is hopeful that the conversation around Wilson will spark broader introspection among her colleagues. The problem, she and some other researchers argue, goes far beyond Wilson. I dont really care that Wilson had racist ideas, because I know pretty much all of the people that I dealt with, when I was coming up through the science system, had racist ideas, said Graves, who in 1988 became the first Black American to receive a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. Wilson was just one of many.

For now, more work from the archives may continue to flesh out a fuller picture of Wilsons life and thought. Speaking last week, McLemore, the author of the Scientific American op-ed on Wilson, said she was still getting hate mail and threats. All I wanted to do, she said, was to have a more nuanced discussion about the work.

Michael Schulson is a contributing editor for Undark. His work has also been published by Aeon, NPR, Pacific Standard, Scientific American, Slate, and Wired, among other publications.

A version of this article was originally posted at Undark and is reposted here with permission. Undark can be found on Twitter @undarkmag

Read this article:
Viewpoint: E.O. Wilson's legacy under fire in some quarters after donated papers underscore fascination with racial differences and human diversity -...

There are many people who have never gotten COVID-19, despite repeated exposure. At the other extreme, there are lots whove gotten sick from the coronavirus more than once, despite being vaccinated and even boosted.

A lot of factors are at play, experts said, including genetics and variations in immune response. Scientists are working towards finding a clear answer.

Theres a difference between people who can never catch COVID, despite exposure, and those who are able to clear it out of their systems without ever knowing they had it. If this second category of people tested regularly, they might show positive for a day or two. Different factors are likely at play between the two groups.

Its so messy, Dr. Julie Parsonnet, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University. We dont know how to differentiate between whether youre just lucky, really careful or if genetically something is different.

In one study, conducted in early 2021 and known as the human challenge study, 36 healthy young adult volunteers none of whom had been vaccinated or previously infected were deliberately given the virus that causes COVID-19 in their noses and tested frequently afterward to track infection. Remarkably, nearly half never got infected at all.

Researchers dont yet know why some of those participants didnt get COVID, and it remains to be seen whether the pattern holds for more infectious but milder variants like omicron.

People have different immune responses to COVID: Despite exposure, some dont seem to catch the coronavirus at all, while others, even vaccinated people, are getting infected several times. A Yale New Haven Health nurse administers a COVID-19 vaccine in this file photo.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at UCSF, said its important to note that with many infectious diseases, including HIV, which she studies and treats, there are instances where people are exposed over and over but never get the virus.

In the case of HIV, this is because these people lack the receptors for the virus. That means no matter how much they are exposed, theyll never become infected because its physically impossible. Scientists say this is likely true with COVID, as well.

But for those who seem to be able to clear the virus so quickly they never knew they had it, differences in the behavior of the immune system could be the reason.

One study on health care workers who repeatedly tested negative found that these people had high levels of memory T cells the long-lasting cells of the immune system that remember a virus and protect against severe disease from previous, non-COVID coronavirus infections, which may have helped them fight off infection more quickly. But another study found that, especially in older patients, high levels of memory T cells can actually be a risk factor for severe COVID-19, as they can trigger a more severe immune response to the virus that overwhelms their systems.

Both situations could be true, and scientists dont yet know exactly why cross-reactive T cells may be helpful for some and detrimental for others, Gandhi said, though this mechanism is less important for people who are vaccinated, as vaccines generate COVID-specific T cells.

Part of what makes COVID so weird is our own immune system, Gandhi said. Were all just really different.

A prominent example of that is the way the virus behaves in children, she said. Children tend to have a different immune response to new pathogens than adults, she said, which means their lungs and immune system are less likely to get inflamed.

Another mystery, she said, is that only some people, especially children, seem to be able to produce effective cross-immunity T cells from other, non-COVID coronavirus infections. Doctors still dont know why some peoples systems do this and others dont.

We need to still look for other genetic factors, Gandhi said.

There also could be physiological factors, like the shape of the nose, how people breathe and what kind of mucus they produce, Parsonnet said, which have not yet been widely studied.

On the flip side, scientists dont yet understand why some people end up getting COVID several times, even after being vaccinated. Some people may have never fully cleared the virus, even if symptoms go away, causing them to test positive repeatedly. Others may just have more reactive immune systems.

Gandhi said that outside factors such as stress or pregnancy can play a role in how likely you are to become infected and sick from the virus, in much the same way that college students get ill around the time of stressful final exams.

People have different immune responses to COVID: Despite exposure, some dont seem to catch the coronavirus at all, while others, even vaccinated people, are getting infected several times.New Haven Fire Department Chief John Alston, Jr., gets the first dose of a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from APRN Grace Grajales in front of the New Haven Health Department in this file photo.

We can be more or less susceptible throughout our lives, she said. Its multifactorial. All of these reasons could be at play.

But really understanding the nuances between whats genetic, whats a quickly cleared virus and whats just lucky will take intensive scientific studies, Parsonnet said. One such effort to discover exactly how genes affect the severity of COVID infection or whether you get it at all is underway, through a collaborative project called the COVID Human Genetic Effort. But the research is still in its early stages.

Right now, we just dont know the answer, she said. But people are really interested in looking at it.

Danielle Echeverria is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DanielleEchev

Excerpt from:
COVID immunity: Why some people are never infected - Torrington Register Citizen