Three things the beach told me about science in 2018

Baggersee. With an unprecedented heat wave hitting the northern hemisphere, I eventually found my annual vacation blog post. I wrote blog posts about our beach vacation in Marielyst, Denmark, or Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. However, this year, it took me the better part of two weeks to realize that I had this year’s beach right beneath my feet – the small artificial beach of the Rossenray Lake, a small lake in my home town in Germany where we spent our summer vacation. And here are the three things the beach (and the lake) told me about science in 2018. Continue reading

Somatic mosaicism of SLC35A2 in focal epilepsy: an emerging common genetic mechanism

Somatic mosaicism in focal epilepsy. Recent findings highlighted the role of somatic parental mosaicism in epileptic encephalopathies. However, somatic mosaicism has also emerged over the last few years as a prominent mechanism in the pathogenesis of lesional focal epilepsies, including focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) type 2 and hemimegalencephaly. Previous studies have identified the role of mosaicism of genes such as MTOR, TSC1/TSC2, and genes encoding components of the PI3K/AKT pathway in patients with epilepsy secondary to brain malformations. A recent study in Annals of Neurology has identified a new unrelated genetic cause of refractory non-lesional focal epilepsy, which leads us to wonder what role mosaicism may be playing in focal epilepsies without obvious findings on MRI.
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The genetic architecture of the epilepsies, as told by 8,500 gene panels

Epilepsy gene panel. Testing for genetic causes in human epilepsy is typically performed using gene panels. In contrast to our research-based exome studies in an academic setting, much of the gene panel testing is performed through commercial laboratories and much of the existing data is usually inaccessible to the scientific community. In a recent publication in Epilepsia, a large US-based diagnostic laboratory reports on some of their existing data on epilepsy gene panels by reporting the results of more than 8500 epilepsy gene panels – a cohort size that is more than five times larger than any prior exome or gene panel study in the epilepsy field. I was asked to write an editorial on this publication, and I also wanted summarize on our blog three key messages that you can take away from this study. Continue reading