This episode features a conversation with Senior Investigator Michael DeBaun, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who has had a long career investigating the causes of and treatments for sickle cell anemia, and advocating for children and adults with this condition across the globe. You can access his Vande…

DNA sequence data promises to enable the study of biodiversity and its response to threats. However, much of this potential depends upon the availability of reference genomes. We hear about the European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) from its Chairperson, Rob Waterhouse (Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics). We also hear from ERGA member Will Nash (Ea…

In this episode, Geoff Marsh speaks to Dr. Stephanie Ford about our Collection on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.Access the full collection here: https://www.nature.com/collections/fccidiefbiSpringer Nature

Even non-academics hear a lot these days about the peer review process, but how does this work behind the scenes? In this episode we meet another new associate editor, Sebastian Ramos Onsins. We also find out what editors do at the journal from Co-editor-in-chief Sara Goodacre and editorial assistant Sandra Huettenbuegel.…

This episode features a conversation with Senior Investigator Tina Cheng, who has held several leadership positions over her career, including her current roles as Chair of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati, and Director of the Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation. Her clinical work and research work have had a long and lasting impact…

The use of genetic simulations is gaining popularity. In this episode we learn about SLiM (https://messerlab.org/slim/), one of the most popular software packages, from one of its creators - Ben Haller.Springer Nature

Researchers are interested in understanding the biology of why some people are more likely to overconsume substances. Some substances are difficult to study—people might not admit to illegal substance abuse or to how much alcohol they drink. But Americans are more likely to accurately recall and share how much coffee they drink—which is related to …

Listen to July's Pediapod episode: What's hot in stem cells and regenerative biology? with Atul Malhotra.Springer Nature

Down in the engine room of a scientific journal are its associate editors, they arbitrate the peer-review process and make the whole system run. Heredity's newest editor is Diala Abu Awad, in this episode we find out a bit about her and her work.Springer Nature

This month features a conversation with Senior Investigator, Professor Richard Jackson, who’s had an extensive career in Public Health. Now Professor Emeritus at the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, Richard has served in many leadership positions including nine years as Director of the CDC's National Ce…

Living near humans and human infrastructure has ecological effects on many species. Iberian wolf populations in human-dominated landscapes are unable to disperse as far as they would in the past. We find out how they are coping with this change, from Dr Carolina Pacheco, Dr Raquel Godinho and Dr Francisco Álvares.…

Scientists have been amassing an increasing amount of evidence about the impact of racial discrimination and racial trauma, including how it can have an impact on brain regions involved with threat vigilance and emotional regulation. At the same time, there’s evidence that increased engagement in those areas has been linked to increased risk of men…

In this episode, listen to our editorial apprentice, Dr. Eric Peeples describe the scope and importance of our collection on neonatal encephalopathy and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy.Visit the collection here: https://www.nature.com/collections/gbejedfegiSpringer Nature

Gene-drives hold great potential for the control of biological pests, but first they need to be thoroughly tested under appropriate conditions. In this episode we discuss some new work assessing whether mosquito populations in Northern Australia could be used to test a gene-drive targeting malaria mosquitoes.…

There’s a hormone called ghrelin that’s secreted in the stomach, and when someone is hungry it contributes to that feeling of hunger and the need to search for food. But neurological studies have suggested that ghrelin might also play a role in compulsivity and impulsivity, and it might be related to substance use disorders.Rebecca Boeme is an assi…

In this episode of Pediapod, Section Editor Jeanie Tryggestad discusses the most recent advances in the field of Pediatric Endocrinology.Springer Nature

Genes are recipes for proteins and proteins do stuff. But if a gene can make more than one protein, how does that affect genetic variation and the possible routes to adaptation? We get an introduction to the topic of adaptive alternative splicing from David Manahan.Springer Nature

We're in the age of big data, but there remain several hurdles to integrating genomics into conservation science. We hear about these issues from Prof Cock Van Oosterhout, and discuss the potential solutions he outlined in his recent perspectives article for Heredity.Springer Nature

Pediatric researchers Cynthia Bearer and Eleanor Molloy join podcast host Geoff Marsh to give an update on plans for the podcast and to offer some sage advice for Early Career Investigators.Find more Pediapod episodes here: https://www.nature.com/collections/fcbjjbchaaSpringer Nature

Dr. Nicole Petersen is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UCLA. Her commentary is a new paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology called “Spotlighting SHAPERS: sex hormones associated with psychological and endocrine roles.” Dr. Petersen starts the paper describing an unnamed signaling molecule that…

In this second of our special episodes on the 2024 PopGroup conference, we hear from Mark Kirkpatrick, who gave the plenary talk which was the climactic end to the meeting. Mark tells us why he loves Popgroup, what his conference talk was about and what questions he's excited to dig into next.Springer Nature

This episode involves a conversation with senior investigator Linda de Vries, who has had a large and lasting effect in the world of pediatric research.Springer Nature

PopGroup is the beloved annual meeting of the Population Genetics group of the Genetics Society. This episode we hear from Mike Richie, lead organiser at this year's host organisation - the University of St Andrews, from plenary speaker Susan Johnston and from student prizewinner Diana Lobo.Springer Nature

The United Nations recently stated that “climate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a defining moment” (https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/climate-change). This statement ended the political debate about the role of human activities in climate change. Global climate change is happening and it will have a profound effect on our…

Serotonin is a critical chemical when it comes to a number of psychiatric conditions, such as OCD, where it seems to play a particular role in cognitive flexibility. That is, serotonin levels are related to the fact that someone is perseverating on intrusive thoughts or compulsions and isn’t able to be as flexible as otherwise would be necessary.Tr…

Each year Heredity awards a prize for the best student paper in the journal, this episode Ellen Nikelski, talking about her paper and how it feels to have been the winner in 2023.Springer Nature

Illness severity scores are commonly used for mortality prediction and risk stratification in pediatric critical care research. However, as mortality has steadily declined in the pediatric intensive care unit there has been increasing attention given to evaluating non-mortality outcomes in survivors. In this episode we meet Early Career Investigato…

One of the big decisions in planning a genetic study is what kind of sequencing approach to use. This episode we talk to Daria Martchenko and Aaron Shafer (Trent University, Canada), whose paper compares and contrasts whole genomes to RADseq in a study of mountain goat demography and adaptive history.…

This episode, along with a few more to come, involves a conversation with a senior investigator who has had a large and lasting effect in the world of pediatric research. The Early Career Investigator episodes will still be coming once a month, but hopefully this will add a bit of variety to the Pediapod feed and shine a light on some of the pionee…

Hypoxic Ischaemic Encephalopathy (HIE), a subset of neonatal encephalopathy, is the most common neurological condition in term born infants. It is known that a range of acute and chronic placental pathologies are more common in infants with HIE. However little is known about how differences in utero-placental function might contribute to varied out…

We tend to focus on research studies on the podcast, but review papers are a hugely important part of the scientific literature. This week we talk to Frank Hailer, reviews editor, who demonstrates his passion for using genetics in his work and talks about why he loves his job at Heredity.Springer Nature

The development of children born very preterm is most often evaluated using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. These single assessments are routinely used as outcome measures for neonatal interventions or as a means of prognosis. However, early Bayley scores may not accurately predict later outcomes. In this episode of Pediapod, we speak to D…

The drug naloxone, otherwise known as Narcan, is a critical tool in reversing fentanyl overdoses and reducing mortality. But now fentanyl is appearing on the streets adulterated with a drug called xylazine. Justin Strickland, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Cassandra Gipson-Reichardt, associate professor in t…

Barriers to gene-flow control population connectivity, but what barriers exist in the sea? How similar is the connectivity of island marine organisms to those on land? As with many evolutionary questions, the Galapagos is the perfect place to find answers. Max Hirschfeld and Christine Dudgeon discuss their new work with the Galapagos bullhead shark…

The temporal facilitates many complex neurological processes. Alterations to these processes are known to correlate with specific functional deficits commonly found in preterm-born children at and beyond school age. However, as yet there is not an objective, validated method to assess the temporal lobe structure or size in very preterm infants.In t…

Sanjay Mathew is a professor and vice chair for research at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program. He’s one of the two authors of a recent review paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, “The why, when, where, how, and so what of so-called rapidly acting antidepressants.”With his colleague Alan Schat…

What is effective population size (Ne), and why is it important? Robin Waples takes us back to the basics of this important evolutionary concept and discusses his new paper, using simulations to demonstrate that Bill Hill's 1972 equation for calculating Ne still works for populations with extreme reproductive patterns.…

The COVID-19 pandemic severely affected health and healthcare systems worldwide and could have resulted in changes in fetal and neonatal outcomes. In this episode, we speak to Early Career Investigator, Vivek Shukla from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Using machine learning techniques, he performed a population-based study to identify cha…

Kamolphat Atsawawaranunt and Anna Santure discuss how they have used diverse samples of DNA to trace the introduction history of the common myna from its native range across its invasive distribution in the Pacific.Springer Nature

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of telemedicine was limited in pediatric primary care. Then, in 2020 it increased exponentially. However, early COVID-19 reports described inequities in telemedicine use across multiple specialties.In this episode, we meet Early Career Investigator, Kelsey Schweiberger from the University of Pittsburgh. In a re…

In this episode, Richard Bernstein (Institute for Bee Research Hohen Neuendorf) discusses the development of the first genomic prediction model for honey bees. Genomic prediction is well established in the breeding of many commercial species, but wasn’t possible in honey bees until now. Richard fills us in on what genomic prediction actually is, wh…

In-person treatment for substance use disorders is an incredibly important tool, but there’s a high failure rate — more than 50 percent of people who enter drop out within the first month. There hasn’t been a highly accurate method of identifying who might leave and who might succeed, and knowing this could help centers allocate resources to give t…

Heart rate characteristics and demographic factors have long been used to aid early detection of late-onset sepsis, however respiratory data may contain additional signatures of infection. In this episode we meet Early Career Investigator Brynne Sullivan from the University of Virginia. She and her team developed machine learning models to predict …

In this episode, Prof Thomas Madsen (Deakin University) discusses how a long-term study of an adder population has provided evidence that polyandry and non-random fertilisation can have positive effects on genetic diversity. Thomas argues that factoring in mating dynamics could help to improve conservation genetic analyses.…

Antisocial personality disorder, or ASPD, is a difficult disorder to study. There have been studies on psychopathic individuals, and on youth with psychopathic traits, but most studies on ASPD to date have been on incarcerated adults. A team of researchers at Heidelberg University wanted to study individuals who are not incarcerated and see what th…

In this episode, Anna Hewett discusses how different factors have led to the patterns of homozygosity observed in a population of red deer living on the Scottish Isle of Rum.Springer Nature