Category Archives: Biology

When a grand old scientist talks, you listen: Maynard Olson and Genomic Medicine

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk.

Last night I had the great opportunity to hear Maynard Olson give a public lecture on Genomic Medicine.  As one of the founders of the Human Genome Project, he’s been around in a pivotal role for much of the revolution in our understanding of the genome.  A revolution, as he himself points out, that we are still just beginning.

He gave his speech as part of the UW Genome Sciences Department’s summer lecture series, and spoke to a packed auditorium about how the information we are learning about the genome has implications for diagnostics, therapeutics, and public policy.  I’ve heard Maynard speak before, and he’s always refreshingly down-to-earth, candid and measured in his descriptions and comments.  Not for him are flights of speculation or hyperbole, and he actually ended his talk with a call to stop the hype.  As he said, “The product is solid.  It doesn’t need hype.”  Maynard, who is slim, with a fringe of red hair that’s silvering at the sides (kind of like Reed Richards), does not look at all near his age of about seventy years. Continue reading →

Nothing but nets: applying network theory to the workplace

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All views are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk.

For another view on networks and innovation, see this post from Innovation Crescendo.

The metaphor of the healthy workplace has been around long enough that it’s more or less one of those catchphrases business types throw out, like “getting the right people on the bus,” (hat tip to Jim Collins).  And like a lot of memes, “healthy workplace” sticks around because it holds an element of truth in it.  Organizations recognize the value of having a workplace that allows workers to thrive, grow and create.  Because of this, a number of methods have been proposed and are in use for evaluating how healthy an organization is.

I’d like to propose one more.  From working on genomics and transcriptomics, I’ve learned the value of looking at networks of molecules as one way to understand human health, and I’ve been thinking about how the concepts of using networks to measure health could be applied outside of biology.  Specifically, can we apply network theory to help monitor the health of a workplace?

We know, instinctively, that any workplace with more than one employee forms a network at a lot of different levels.  The more employees, the greater the complexity.  This is one of the most important things to us about where we work, isn’t it–the interactions we have on a daily basis?  For many individuals, one of the main perks of work is the chance to spend time and do productive things with like-minded, skilled people.  In knowledge-based industries especially, I think this is one of the most important things for the creative and the talented.

Given this, it’s possible to imagine that characterizing the network itself can be useful.  Biomarkers are routinely employed in biomedical research.  The network formed by the people at work may be a biomarker of organizational health.  It may be the expression of the overall robustness of the organization, just like the phenotype of a person is the ultimate expression of all the biological and chemical networks functioning inside her.  Step one, of course, is figuring out what that network looks like Continue reading →

Maternal immune systems, autism and the value of prediction

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk

Following on these two papers (1, 2) published in Translational Psychiatry.

When I wrote about Gene by Environment (GxE) interactions and the possible health of children, I was describing how changes in maternal health might have an effect on child health at the level of what genes are turned on and off.  In that situation, there may be the possibility that actions by potential mothers before conceiving could positively impact child health.  In many other cases, though, the actions for predicted problems can only take place after birth.  Key point: in many cases these interventions are best done early, which is why states have newborn screening programs (although surprisingly the number of tested conditions varies from state to state).  In the context it’s interesting that a couple of recent papers have identified what may be a way to predict the development of autism in children.

The papers describe findings that may, if corroborated, have a large impact on autism prediction and, eventually, possible treatment and prevention for a subset of patients.  First, the team demonstrated through study of non-human primates that these human autoantibodies, when given to pregnant rhesus monkeys, led to significant changes in both maternal and infant monkey behavior.  Mothers in the experimental group showed more protective behavior toward their infants, and those offspring more frequently approached known and unknown monkeys despite not receiving commensurate social responses.  Male offspring also showed measurable increases in brain volume.  Second, the research team discovered that autoantibodies  to combinations of fetal brain proteins are found in a significant fraction of mothers who have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children, while mothers from the control group rarely have such autoantibodies to so many of these proteins. Continue reading →

Girls, G.A.M.E.S., STEM and fun

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There’s a lot of serious work going into understanding fun.  And for good reason.  If a game is fun it can make a developer millions of dollars.  And if it’s not…  The element of fun is also the underlying concept behind the rise of gamification approaches in business.  You know that a concept has entered the mainstream when it gets satirized in Dilbert.   Companies are experimenting with adding game-like elements such as competition, leaderboards, interactive simulations, and other similar innovations to the workplace.  Since humans enjoy games and games act to engage peoples’ attention, the theory is game-like features (or outright games) will help companies be more efficient, train more effectively and even drive innovation.

And the key element is fun.  Something about the alchemy between the participants and the system has to work in the right way to trigger the sensation of pleasure and interest.  Without it, the leaderboard withers, participation lags (or worse, gets mandated which is a death knell for fun), and the investment doesn’t pay off.  There’s a nice post over at techcrunch (HT @geoffclapp) dissecting the concept of “hafta” versus “wanna,” which I think is one of they important elements underlying fun.

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of a recent initiative put forth by Northeastern University, in collaboration with the Institute for Systems Biology, the National Girls Collaborative Project, and others.  The very bold, very exciting goal is to build a large, public-private collaboration that will create games that interest girls in the science, technology, engineering and math fields (STEM), and that will increase the probability that girls continue into STEM careers.  That initiative, appropriately, is called Girls Advancing in Math, Engineering and Science (G.A.M.E.S.).

At this beginning stage, there are many clear challenges ahead and no one is denying that a lot of effort and coordination will have to take place for this to have a shot of working.  I attended their kickoff meeting and volunteered to be part of their researching efforts, because I’m interested in seeing how these games will be developed to try and make them appealing and fun for girls.  Already at the first meeting it was clear there will be some healthy debates about how to do that, whether girls really do get different kinds of fun from their games, and also how to prioritize fun versus more educational goals such as showing girls that research involves more failure than success and how that’s okay.

I expect it will be interesting. I expect to learn a lot about games and tools for measuring subjective information.  I hope others check it out and get involved.  It’ll be fun!  And if it isn’t we’ll want to figure out why, because that’s the kind of data this project really needs in order to be a success.

Coda:  For another take on the strange power/fascination of games, check out his New Yorker story about maybe the worst video game in the world–and how it’s led to over a million dollars in charity donations.  And yes, I realize this game is not in any way, shape or form, “fun.”

Getting patients back to normal

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All opinions my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk.

Inspired in part by this column from David Shaywitz

Here is a story I had the privilege to hear from Fred Modell, one of the founders of the Jeffrey Modell Foundation (check them out; they’re a great group):  Fred was at their annual picnic, where they host kids with immune system defects.  Fred walked by two early teenage girls, and as he passed by he heard one of them asking the other, “You really kissed a boy?”  Which seems like a common enough thing for two teenage girls to be talking about.

Only in this case it wasn’t.  If your immune system doesn’t function like most everyone else’s, then kissing a boy is not just part of growing up.  It can be dangerous to your health. It’s something  about which you have to think hard, and try your best to understand the implications, and you need to be careful, cautious and measured.  Everything your first kiss really shouldn’t be.

For these girls, though, because of groups like the Modell Foundation and the treatments they’ve helped pioneer and support, these girls could experience the spontaneity of an event that so many kids take for granted.  And they could feel normal, like their friends in school. Continue reading →