Springer Nature

Dr. Inti Zlobec, professor of digital pathology at the Institute of Pathology in the University of Bern, discusses her team’s recent publication in Modern Pathology on the role of image analysis in assessing area of extracellular mucin and predicting consensus molecular subtypes (CMS) in colorectal carcinoma. The utilized deep learning algorithm had an excellent agreement with pathologists’ estima...

Thousands of women have been infected with SARS-CoV2 during the COVID-19 pandemic. While very few of these infections have been shown to transmit vertically from mother to offspring, it remains unclear what effect, if any, a mother's SARS-CoV2 infection has on fetal development. In this episode, we interview Dr Brian Kalish, from the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children to disc...

Hidden within shark genomes are clues to the evolution of marine biodiversity hotspots. In this episode, Dr Paolo Momigliano (University of Vigo), tells us about his work on the grey reef shark: from fishing in the tropical waters of the Coral Triangle to detailed demographic modelling. This episode explores the recent Heredity paper: “Genomic insights into the historical and contemporary demograp...

Traditional pathology have played an integral role in the delivery of diagnosis, semi-quantitative or qualitative assessment of protein expression, and classification of disease. Technological advances have recently paved the way for the development of digital pathology-based approaches for quantitative pathologic assessments, namely whole slide imaging (WSI) and artificial intelligence (AI)–based...

In this episode we revisit an inspiring episode that answers the question: why should you publish in Heredity?

The giant tortoises of the Galápagos archipelago form one of the most iconic evolutionary systems in the world. But is all as it appears? Join Dr Evelyn Jensen (Newcastle University) and discover how museum specimens are reshaping our understanding of this famous radiation. This episode explores the recent Heredity paper: “A new lineage of Galapagos giant tortoises identified from museum samples”...

Driving while under the influence of THC, known as drugged driving, is becoming more of an issue as more states legalize cannabis for both medical and recreational use around the country. THC is known to impair cognitive and psychomotor performance and thus impair driving. Jodi Gilman is a neuroscientist and an associate professor of psychiatry at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School,...

Barley is one of the world’s oldest and most important cultivated cereal grains. But it’s long history of domestication has resulted in greatly reduced genetic diversity, which isn’t ideal for plant breeding efforts. So, in this episode, Che-Wei Chang and Prof. Karl Schmid (University of Hohenheim) discuss their quest to find useful genetic variation in wild barley relatives. This episode explores...

Twenty-five percent of children who survive acute symptomatic seizures as neonates go on to develop epilepsy. Whilst there are several known risk factors, currently not enough is known about the mechanisms behind the development of epilepsy following neonatal brain injury, and thus it is not yet possible to reliably predict the individual risk of developing this disease in this group of patients....

Every year Heredity publishes some outstanding student-led papers, and to recognise the quality of this work the journal runs a student paper prize. So, what makes a paper stand out? Find out, as we hear from overall winner Dr Allie Graham and 2nd runner-up Johanna Denkena. Explore the full Student Prize Longlist Collection here: https://www.nature.com/collections/bedbicdicb

Inbreeding depression is often considered to be a bad thing, especially in conservation programmes. However, that may not always be the case. In this episode Dr Eugenio López-Cortegano (University of Edinburgh), Dr Eulalia Moreno (Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas) and Prof. Aurora García-Dorado (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) discuss a surprising benefit of inbreeding in small, endangered...

Most very preterm infants experience apneas of prematurity. It is a common comorbidity of prematurity, and therefore reliable real-time monitoring of respiratory rates is key in these infants. The conventional method is to use chest impedance measured with electrodes on the surface of the thorax. However, this method is known to be unreliable, as it is prone to motion artifacts. For this reason, i...

In the past, there had been a school of thought that looked at evolution linearly — that is, you could in theory draw a line among mammals as they evolved, and so, say, rodent brains would basically be less evolved primate brains. That turns out not to be true; evolution is much more like a branching tree, and each branch then goes on to develop independently, sometimes in parallel. Some groups of...

In this episode of ModPath CHAT, Dr. George J Netto reviews five of the highly cited manuscripts that were published in Modern Pathology in 2021.

There is a growing body of evidence showing that excessive early media use is detrimental to children's physical and mental health. As such, the World Health Organization guidelines suggest that screen time for infants should be limited to a maximum of one hour per day. However, with the growing ubiquity of digital media, it is thought that preschoolers are exposed to more than two hours of screen...

Join Prof. Anne Yoder (Duke University), Dr Mario dos Reis (Queen Mary University of London) and Dr George Tiley (Duke University) as they discuss their recent work looking at mutation rates in the gray mouse lemur. It’s a story that takes us from a house party to the bleeding edge of genetics research, with a detour through the scandalous sex lives of mouse lemurs. In this episode we explore the...

Identification of molecular alterations in NTRK 1-3 has become increasingly important with the emergence of histology-agnostic, US Food and Drug Administration-approved, effective inhibitors. The host discusses with Dr. Jaclyn Hechtman, director of clinical diagnostic development at Neogenomics, her practical insights on how testing for NTRK fusion can best be implemented and communicated within t...

As cardiovascular disease has many known genetic components, a team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine created a panel of genes associated with cardiovascular disease they call HeartCare. David Murdock, previously the assistant director of the clinical lab at Baylor College of Medicine’s Human Genome Sequencing Center and now a lab director at Invitae, states “we thought that by looking...

Caffeine administration has been associated with reduced rates of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) in preterm neonates but the effect of caffeine on renal oxygenation is unknown. In this episode, we meet this month's highlighted Early Career Investigator, Dr. Matthew Harer from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He has been investigating the potential use of Near Infrared S...

The host is joined by Dr. Andres Acosta from the Brigham and Women Hospital. Dr Acosta discusses, on behalf of a distinguished group of coauthors, their recent somewhat provocative modern pathology publication proposing that mesenchymal neoplasms of the prostate are morphologically and molecularly heterogeneous lesion that include neoplasms that harbor genetic aberrations seen in specific mesenchy...

Can we really understand ancient shifts in oceanic currents by looking at the population genetics of migratory species? Find out in this episode, as Dr Jurjan van der Zee (University of Groningen) discusses his search for a warm-water corridor between the Atlantic and Indian oceans in the genomes of green turtles.

Star-shaped cells called astrocytes are the most abundant cells to be found in the human brain. In the past, they’d been thought to play a supporting role to neurons, such as providing metabolic support, but recently they’re also emerging as stars of information processing. They can respond to neurotransmitters and release neuroactive substances that then affect synaptic transmission and plasticit...

Early on in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the majority of infected children were either asymptomatic or had mild COVID-19 disease, prompting many to demand a higher acceptable risk threshold for pediatric vaccines. More recently, as children begin to make up a larger proportion of the infected population and following evidence of the mental and physical toll exacted by the pandemic on children, a pedia...

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) can be an important tool in breast cancer patients to help stratify individuals into levels of disease risk. The clinical utility of PRS is still being evaluated, but what hasn't yet been evaluated is how to communicate such results to patients, and how they respond to their PRS scores. On this month’s GenePod, Tatiane Yanes, a post-doctoral researcher at the University...

In this special “Meet the Expert” episode, two distinguished guests from Johns Hopkins University discuss their pioneering approach of applying methodologies, initially developed for astronomy, to the assessment of biomarkers of tumor microenvironment (TME). The guests are Dr. Janis Taube, director of Dermatopathology at Hopkins, and a co-Director of the TME Core at the Bloomberg-Kimmel Institute...