American Scientist Magazine: The latest issue features ‘Cellular Portraits’ – Detailed sketches helped reveal the function of chromosomes.
The Gene That Changed Cholesterol Treatment
Studies of rare mutations revealed a new way to lower LDL cholesterol—and led to an entirely new class of drugs.
In the early 2000s, geneticists Helen Hobbs and Jonathan Cohen at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center launched an ambitious effort to investigate cardiovascular health in Dallas County. Their study was unusual for the time. Rather than largely focusing on people of European ancestry, the Dallas Heart Study deliberately recruited a diverse population that reflected the region’s demographics.
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- Rare genetic changes in a gene called PCSK9 help control low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the “bad” cholesterol linked to heart disease.
- People who naturally make less of the PCSK9 protein have much lower LDL levels, pointing researchers toward new possibilities for lowering cholesterol.
- That insight led to a new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs and showed how studying diverse populations can uncover important clues about disease.
Redrawing the Plague Maps
Ancient genomes are rewriting the history of Yersinia pestis infections across time and space.
I spent much of my childhood in Colorado, which means that I, like millions of others living in the American West, grew up hearing warnings about the dangers of plague. People often find it shocking to learn that Yersinia pestis, the bacterium discovered in 1894 that is believed to have caused the mid-14th-century Black Death and other plague pandemics, is still around and dangerous, but that is one of many misperceptions about plague that need correcting. Plague’s multiple pandemics were not limited to the Black Death nor to Europe. And it is not a disease that disappears simply because no human cases are being reported at epidemic levels. Plague is not a thing of the past, and infections most definitely occur to this day.
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For centuries, our understanding of plague was riddled with assumptions based on a few historical accounts and data from modern plague victims.
Advances in genomics and bioarcheology now allow us to tie historical plague pandemics to human remains and even reconstruct the full plague family tree.
These data tell a new, broader story in which plague arrives earlier, stays later, and lurks in rural animal reservoirs before spilling over into human populations.
How Explanation Unlocks Deeper Understanding
The human drive to ask “why” can prompt abstract thinking and aid comprehension.
Seeking and evaluating explanations can shape the very process of learning. Just like tasting the soup as you’re cooking can shift the final product toward a closer approximation of soupy perfection, explaining as you learn can change the course of learning itself, pushing you to find a closer approximation of a truly great explanation: one that covers all the relevant observations in the simplest way possible. But how does that work?
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The process of explaining is a powerful learning tool.From a young age, humans ask “why”; answering that question can reveal deeper meanings and reveal hidden patterns.
Explaining can unlock abstraction, a complex thought process that allows people to generalize from specific examples to identify common themes.
The need to know why can unlock learning, but it can also drive some people to latch on to patterns that do not exist, such as conspiracy theories.
