A Case of the Mondays

Got the blues? A case of the Mondays?  Turns out you’re not alone!  A new study reveals that flies exhibit symptoms of depression.  In both humans and animals there are physical symptoms that manifest relating to feelings of helplessness or despair.  It turns out that flies exhibit some of the same symptoms, which means that scientists may have a new way to test depression medication. 

These researchers placed the flies in an environment in which the flies were heated up.  The “master” flies cooled themselves by moving around, however the “yoked” flies stopped moving after realizing that they could not control the heat.  The researchers interpreted their more sloth-like behavior as a symptom of depression.  They also noted that female flies seemed to slow down more than males did. 

Do you believe this research proves that flies are capable of being depressed?  And how about the fact that female flies were more likely to be depressed?  Do you think there is any correlation between this finding and humans?

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/pass-prozac-fruit-flies-get-depressed?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=5&con=pass-the-prozac-fruit-flies-get-depressed-too

Height Genetics

A recent study done at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, revealed that DNA can be used to predict taller-than-average adult height. Previous research has linked DNA variants to normal height differences, 180 of these variants were used to test 800 extremely tall adults and over 9,000 normal-height differences. Their findings showed that “over 90 percent of these DNA variants showed a height effect in the tall people, and for over 40 percent this effect was statistically significant.” DNA-based predictions for height could be beneficial for the medical community by allowing for the detection of certain growth diseases in children. The field of Forensics could also benefit from this research by using height genetics to predict a potential suspect of a crime. One issue that should be noted about this method is that the accuracy is less than that of other DNA-based predictions for eyes, hair color, age, ect. What do you think about this research? Do you think there are any biases associated with using DNA to predict physical characteristics of individuals?

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2013/11/20/predicting_human_body_height_from_dna.html