The completion of the Human Genome Project 10 years ago promised a new era of disease treatment and personalized medicine. But have these hopes been realized? On Wednesday, November 30, a panel of experts that includes geneticists, an ethicist, and a legal scholar will engage in a lively discussion on the topic of The Human Genome and Human Health: Will the Promise Be Fulfilled? Discussing where genomics should go in the future, how it might change the doctor’s office in the next decade, and the disparities that exist in the developing world, the panelists will evaluate both the promises of sequencing the human genome and the reality. Below, Rob DeSalle, who curated the Museum’s exhibition The Genomic Revolution 10 years ago, addresses three common myths about genetics.
Myth: Phenotypic traits are only transmitted via DNA.
Rob DeSalle: A host of environmental factors influence how much a genetic predisposition will actually be expressed in a person’s phenotype, or outward form and appearance. The problem is that genes have been put up on pedestals because they are easy to understand, while the environmental interaction that produces phenotypes is extremely complex. And then there’s also a new field of biology called epigenetics, where the environment actually changes something in the genome and implements a phenotypic change. So what we inherit from our parents and what we pass on to our children isn’t the end of the game. Read more »
On the first Wednesday of every month, the Museum hosts inquisitive minds for cocktails and conversation about the latest science topics at SciCafe. The popular after-hours series returns on October 5 with an evening devoted to scientific evidence about the nature of race and “racial” differences led by Museum Curators Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, who recently co-authored a book on the subject.
Dr. DeSalle, an evolutionary geneticist, and Dr. Tattersall, a physical anthropologist, will discuss the lack of biological evidence for racial boundaries among human populations, the evolutionary processes that account for distinctions among Homo sapiens, and more. They recently answered a few questions on the topic.
Why is race a scientific myth? What has science or culture done to perpetuate it?
Tattersall: “Race” is a within-species phenomenon. And within a species there are two possible processes, the effects of which are diametrically opposed: diversification and re-integration. The human diversity we see today, and its distribution, is a product of both, producing a messy picture that is not helpfully clarified by trying to recognize discrete “races.”
DeSalle: Why race as a biological concept keeps raising its ugly head is a question that is addressed by biologists, sociologists, and historians all the time. Almost all racialist scientific approaches have been detrimental to our understanding of human cultural variation and have led in some instances to the worst atrocities committed in the name of science. Social Darwinism, Eugenics, Nazism, and the IQ Debate all stemmed from scientific racialism. Read more »
Is it true that children face an uphill battle at the beginning of every school year to regain ground lost in the lazy days of summer?Yes and no,says Rob DeSalle, curator of the exhibition Brain: The Inside Story. “The fact of losing what you’ve learned during the school year is fairly well known and well researched,” says Dr. DeSalle, citing a Johns Hopkins University study that showed children in general “lose” one to two months of learning, especially in math, over the summer. “It’s not a myth. But it’s not as extreme as people think and it’s’ not insurmountable.”
One way to keep brains active before school resumes is to challenge children with a late-summer reading list, says DeSalle, a Museum curator who conducts research in the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics. The John Hopkins study showed, for example, that children in more affluent socio-economic groups fared better in reading because they tended to have more access to books. Games that involve counting and strategy can also stimulate neural pathways. Visitors to Brain: The Inside Story, which closes August 14, can test their ability to strategize and plan ahead, as well as other critical functions, in brain-teasing interactive exhibits, several of which are described by DeSalle in the video below.
Video games aren’t necessarily bad for kids, says DeSalle, especially if they involve a lot of reading. But a game that requires counting spaces or points and keeping a paper tally is even better, making Scrabble the ideal summer pastime for both the language skills involved and the math needed to keep score. Chess is good too, says DeSalle, as are sports like tennis and ping pong, which require strategy and involve exercise, also a benefit for developing brains.
In the long run, however, DeSalle says there is no silver bullet for solving the problem of summer “brain drain.” “We really need to do the hard work,” he says. “Educators have to figure out how kids learn and figure out what happens when reading and math skills are dormant. And when we find that out we can implement a plan of action.”
The human brain is constantly adapting as neural networks rewire themselves in response to new experiences, such as learning different skills or even recovering from trauma such as a stroke. For example, stroke patients who lose their ability to speak can often regain the skill with intensive training, which reestablishes new networks in the healthy parts of their brains.
Learn more about the brain’s plasticity and experience it first-hand through interactive games that enhance hand-eye coordination by visiting Brain: The Inside Story, open now through Sunday, August 14.
In the video below, Curator Rob DeSalle discusses how brains change throughout a lifetime.
Mechanical devices now connect to the brain to restore lost senses like hearing and sight. What if similar technologies could end addiction, improve memory, cure a headache, or lift one’s mood? These and other amazing facets of current brain research are explored in the Museum exhibition Brain: The Inside Story in a section called Your 21st Century Brain.
Here, visitors can see a video in which researchers try to decode language directly within the brain through a brain-computer interface that has the potential for manipulating a keyboard to communicate or powering artificial limbs. Another treatment on the horizon uses non-invasive magnetic waves to theoretically treat for everything from schizophrenia to obesity.
In the video below, exhibition co-curator Rob DeSalle discusses these and other cutting-edge developments ahead for our 21st century brains. Brain: The Inside Story is open now through Sunday, August 14.
