Wow - can you elaborate on your process to “debug” these different layers? What comprises your personal or team’s feedback loop, given that 6 months is short? (I suspect it’s a lot of sequencing?) Are there good comparisons to be made with getting acquainted with a new codebase/technical system? Are there any particular computational tools involved? Pardon all the questions, this stuff is fascinating!
To be clear this is/was a hobby project. Getting access to DNA files is required yes, but sequencing wasn't really the limiting factor. It started with simply poking around my DNA file and then some friends many of which were only done on 23andme. Most of the time was spent reading countless papers and making hypothesis, trying to invalidate them and iterating. Constantly seeking out new ways to look at the problem and going from there. Every time I got a new DNA file from someone I could see how their dna fit into the current hypothesis. Because every DNA was different it was a great way to test them. It anything it made my job easier. I wasn't looking for a single snp, but common patterns.
Sometimes this has involved using nebula and their whole genome sequencing dna test to get much more accurate data, but more often than not the cheap dna tests most people do were good enough.
As for actual programs, I did write some quick and dirty scripts to scan dna files for specific snps, but mostly I would just read them as the parts I needed were not that long.
There is a fair amount of phenotype data to start with. What ultimately started this was knowing 1) that there was a number of conditions that are seen in statistically weird numbers in the LGBT and 2) sex hormone levels in the LGBT are not exactly what you would expect.
My goto fun question when talking with someone in the LGBT is if they have hypermobility. A good percentage do. In one specific example those with classical like EDS will have 21-OHD and thus POTS and elevated 17-OHP, backdoor DHT production (aka PCOS for women) etc.
The real question I have been pondering is what exactly do I do with this as this is just a fun puzzle, not my job, I don't work for any school etc.
I don't get it. If you can solve for LGBT genes that easily, then why isn't this in the news? Surely academic scientists would have tried this if all you needed was some scripting to find patterns?
Been interviewed by a medical news journal and this has all been done in the public over the last year so there was never a “release date” or anything. Honestly at the start I was just another person with a guess.
There are some scary implications such as in some cases we have had sexuality and gender changes once we knew how to “inject into the system”
I guess when you get down to it, it wasn’t actually that note worthy by itself as most cases are simply minor versions of already well documented conditions. It is only when you combine them that they add up.
And lastly given that I have not paid to get it peer reviewed and published formally it isn’t news yet. Again no school affiliation. Just now mostly helping treat a bunch of those common conditions I mentioned.
There has been some research mostly into gay men. But honestly the transgender data set is much richer. At the end of the day it is a minority that is being politicized so not exactly being investigated, but once you figure it out it is like shooting fish in a barrel there is so much easy research. Before this it was (simplifying but not) brain scans for the most part. It was mostly unknown.
I know of Sapolsky saying what a decade ago that LGBT brain structures are, like, flipped wrt. heterosexual people. But I thought the scientific consensus has been that there is no easy way to find a gay gene(s), so your claim of finding such low-hanging fruit seems to fly in the face of that. I'm already imagining that academic scientists would be ready to dismiss your work outright.
Consensus is that there is no single "flip this and you're gay" gene, but we've known for decades there is a genetic component because of twin studies. Fits right up with what this person says they've found.
Why didn't the medical news journal hook you up with a professor? They could've taken a look at your work. Like, how do you know your scripts isn't just doing pseudoscience and based on a superficial understanding of all those papers, especially if this is just a hobby project. There could be blind spots.
I am already working with a doctor and have talked with those in academia. They find it neat, but are not going to jump projects, they already have their area of study that they are working to publishing something on, not this.
There absolutely could be blind spots and been iterating on it all year each time the tweaks are smaller, but the core idea has not changed, but simply accumulated more and more evidence.
