Cristian Vlad Zot's Blog, page 10

William Banting’s Weight Loss Experiment [1864] – My Notes

This short and free read, I’d recommend getting your hands on it immediately; you’re given a clear description from William Banting himself (1796 – 1878) about how he went from obese to normal weight in a matter of months. He was ~67 years old at the time of his n=1 personal experiment… Here I’m going

Genetic Mutations and Diabetes – My Analysis of 115 Genomes

Last week I began analyzing genotype and phenotype data available through OpenSNP, a platform where people share this type of information. The first phenotype I looked into was about smoking. Using Python I took the smoker status reported by users and correlated it with a mutation (rs1051730) in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor alpha 3 subunit

Analysis of 243 Genomes – My First Report [Nov. 2016]

About two weeks ago I learned about this website OpenSNP where people can share their genetic information and not only. It is similar to 1000genomes, but I think it is much more interesting to work with because aside of genetic information (SNP sequencing, exome, etc.) most users also share phenotype data; data is not anonymized.

30 Health and Fitness Books – Free Bundle

If you’re on my email list, you already know about this promo as I broadcasted a message immediately it became available. If you’re not on the list and didn’t know about this, listen up. I joined forces with a dozen plus authors and we give our books for free – 30 in number. This bundle

My Encounter with Curiosity, the Mars Rover

As I came out of the number 1 subway station in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday evening I encountered a scene that was different to what I was used to. Instinct had me enter, but I couldn’t stay long because I was already late for an evening lecture at the genome center right across the street.

After-thoughts of a 44-hour fast – Just completed [Oct. 2016]

I took a trip to DC earlier this week and I decided to take a break from eating for the whole duration – until returning to NYC. The thing is that when I returned to the Big Apple it was midnight and I was more eager to sleep than to eat. So I only ate

Radiotolerance Lessons from the Tardigrades

Image: female tardigrade containing eggs. Hashimoto and colleagues (2016) published an article in Nature recently: Extremotolerant tardigrade genome and improved radiotolerance of human cultured cells by tardigrade-unique protein Tardigrades, a.k.a. water bears, are some of the most extreme organisms, capable of surviving in the most un-habitable environments and being exposed to insults that would kill

The Hallmarks of Cancers #1 – Deregulating Cellular Energetics

I wrote a moderate-length review of Hanahan and Weinberg’s papers a few months ago. In their papers, they discuss the most common similarities among cancers and they base their writing on ~5 decades of research in this field. While each cancer is unique, especially if we view it from a genetics standpoint, Hanahan and Weinberg

How Steemit Social Platform Rewards its Users – My Quick Intro

Introduction A few weeks ago I decided to join Steemit. This is a social platform where users are rewarded for posting content, for commenting, for voting and for curating the content made by other users. The first time I heard about the platform was in early July, when two online friends (Leah – stellabelle –

Blood Work #5 – August 2016 – [Consistency]

Introduction The last time I posted about my blood work was in March 2016. Here is my August 2016 update: And here’s a comparison with past data: Context and Analysis The results as well as the time perspective should be self-explanatory. There isn’t too much interpretation to add. I’ll reiterate from the table. HDL/LDL ratio