How does behavioral individuality arise? Theoretical models have highlighted the potential roles of genes and the environment. However, Gallagher et al. show that behavioral individuality occurs in the absence of genetic variation and is unaffected by experimentally manipulating the developmental environment. This suggests that behavioral individuality may originate even before birth.

Polyploidy, or whole genome duplication, reshapes genomes through biased gene loss and regulatory rewiring, yet the drivers of biased fractionation among subgenomes remain unclear. Using maize and Bra...

To facilitate the comparison of our results to those from prior ExWAS in PEGS data, we focused our analyses on the same 11 phenotypes as a prior study [11] and derived 88 new GIS-based exposure indicators for use in a cross-sectional design. The phenotypes were originally selected due to their high prevalence in the PEGS cohort and were defined from dichotomous (yes/no) answers to questions about physician-diagnosed disease for allergic rhinitis, asthma, bone loss, fibroids, high cholesterol, hypertension, iron-deficient anemia, lower GI polyps, migraines, ovarian cysts, and type 2 diabetes, with additional verification based on relevant survey responses [11]. Additionally, the results of another study in PEGS data indicate these phenotypes have sufficient power to detect an odds ratio greater than 1.375, a reasonable effect size given prior ExWAS analyses conducted in PEGS data, assuming a 10% exposure frequency and 10% outcome prevalence [9]. To prepare the analytic cohort, we filtered the participant sample (n = 9426) to participants with complete age, sex, income, and race/ethnicity data [11] and with a current residential address that could be geocoded (n = 7531). Address geocoding was performed using a three-stage process: first, the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder was used to identify any...

A meta-analysis on the effects of environmental enrichment on the rodent brain has identified common patterns in the expression of genes associated with communication between neurons and synaptic plasticity, processes that are essential for brain adaptation.

DNA methylation is an epigenetic mark that is influenced by underlying genetic profile, environment, and ageing. In addition to X-linked DNA methylation, sex-specific methylation patterns are widespre...

A meta-analysis on the effects of environmental enrichment on the rodent brain has identified common patterns in the expression of genes associated with communication between neurons and synaptic plasticity, processes that are essential for brain adaptation.

Discover, with Prof Helen Fisher, how the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study tracks 2,232 UK twins from age 5 to 30 to uncover how genes and environment shape behaviour, health, and m...