my days in phd program

So what do I do for my phd studies?

Wake up really late. Go return a Harry Potter DVD to Redbox. Go to gym. Eat lunch(?) for 1hr and 30min at home. Then go to lab to change cell media. Act like I'm reading papers. Go to beer hour in 3hrs that's on every friday. Go home to eat dinner. Play sc2 with my brother.....

:D

Need a break? pursue a phd program...

jk. don't do it.

Two hit model and de novo mutation

Even though there are arising evidence that autism may be caused by environmental factors, many still believe that there are strong genetic influence in autism (Deletions and duplication of 16p11.2 is single most common cause of autism in genetic analysis and duplication of 7q11.23 also correlates with the cause of autism). In my search for my phd project, I looked into what genetic mechanisms may contribute to this increasing incidents of Autism and I found Two-hit model and the influence of de novo mutation.

If there is a molecular-phenotypic pathway, single mutation in that pathway may cause a change in phenotype (e.g. intellectual disability, depression, etc). Then, a second mutation (that may be caused from spontaneous mutation, de novo) can push the phenotype to autism or more severe neurological disorder. Even though it's only a model at this point, I thought it was very convincing. It supports the fact that autism is oligogenic disorder and also it's a partially heritable disorder. Partially heritable because there are high concordance rates between siblings in a family or twins in regards to ASD. Also, two-hit model explains how autistic kid can be born from a perfectly behaviorally normal parents (excluding environmental factors)...

so what do I do with this information...? Find these recessive genes? Breed mice with multiple known autism contributing genes to see the rate of autistic progeny? I don't know....hahaha.... :(

Autism, autism, autism!!!!

Autism? yes, that will be the topic I will be studying for next 4-5 years since I joined the lab that studies autism like crazy.

http://www.einstein.yu.edu/labs/brett-abrahams/default.aspx?id=28778

Here's the info on the lab that I am part of for my phd years. The lab is pretty cool with chill PI, a nurse, post-doc, and another student. People are nice. My other fellow phd student baked me ice cream/oreo brownies. I get a nice desk and a lab bench. But, I have a serious problem.

I don't have my own project!!!!!!!!!

why is that a problem? maybe not too severe right now, but it will be bad if this continues for a long time as my qualifying exam approaches and my PI is not gonna like me for being dumb...aite, so i seriously need to find something to investigate...and i kinda got excited when i ran into this news article.

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/07/14/study-finds-environment-more-important-to-predicting-autism-risk-than-genetics/

People often thought that genetic components have a high effect in the cause of autism...and these papers came out saying environmental factors have higher effect than heritable genetic components in the cause of autism. So what? I thought this could be a lead to my thesis project. I don't know what this could go into, but I just need to read, read, and read. Let's see how this goes.