Week 7: Burrows & Ayhan

I found the Burrows et al. paper interesting as a result of the fact that they focused on environmental approach to schizophrenia. I feel like we are at a point in science where everyone is searching for some underlying genetic component to a disease or disorder and then trying to fix that specific thing using some fancy biological or chemical method and it was a little refreshing to read a paper where they were basically like, here is this genetic issue that is shown to be related to schizophrenic symptoms, but instead of a fancy drug or something of the sort, we’ll work on environmental methods. I find that refreshing not because I don’t believe fancy drugs are the way, I think they are, ultimately. But the reality is that they take time to develop and even when developed, not everyone gets them. Research focusing on way to ameliorate symptoms of a disorder could prove useful for people living with the disorder currently as it may help them cope with their disorder or even improve their conditions. I just think we get stuck in developing cool things for later that we forget about the people going through these issues right now. Little models like EE, though seemingly comparatively simplistic could be helpful sooner than later. I always gravitate towards the more clinical/personal sides of things and research like this, though not as shiny and cool, could prove promising.

In terms of the Ayhan et al. paper, I don’t have a supporting speech about this one but I did find their research interesting. However, as I read the paper, I found myself thinking that it would be obvious that there would be different effects depending on the time of expression of a gene. I figure they found that intuitive as well and just did the work out to find the exact differences in timing. In the end, they find that expression of hDISC1has the most effects when done both prenatally and postnatally: to which I couldn’t help but respond ‘well yeah, obviously.’