Derived cannabinoid product availability among online vape shops.

Objectives: To determine the proportion of online vape shops that offer derived cannabinoid products in a large metropolitan area (San Diego, California), measure their compliance with state hemp regulations, and estimate whether these shops receive more website traffic compared to those that offered nicotine or tobacco.

Methods: We obtained vape shops (n = 109) using browser-based (i.e.

The role of mutations associated with familial neurodegenerative disorders on blood-brain barrier function in an iPSC model.

Background: Blood-brain barrier dysfunction is associated with many late-stage neurodegenerative diseases. An emerging question is whether the mutations associated with neurodegenerative diseases can independently lead to blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction. Studies from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells suggest that mutations associated with neurodegenerative disease are non-cell autonomous, resulting in gain of toxic function in derived neurons and astrocytes.

Integrated Transcriptomic and Proteomic Analysis of Primary Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells.

Understanding the molecular profile of every human cell type is essential for understanding its role in normal physiology and disease. Technological advancements in DNA sequencing, mass spectrometry, and computational methods allow us to carry out multiomics analyses although such approaches are not routine yet. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) are a widely used model system to study pathological and physiological processes associated with the cardiovascular system.

How to share data for collaboration.

Within the statistics community, a number of guiding principles for sharing data have emerged; however, these principles are not always made clear to collaborators generating the data. To bridge this divide, we have established a set of guidelines for sharing data. In these, we highlight the need to provide raw data to the statistician, the importance of consistent formatting, and the necessity of including all essential experimental information and pre-processing steps carried out to the statistician.

Cross-tissue integration of genetic and epigenetic data offers insight into autism spectrum disorder.

Integration of emerging epigenetic information with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) genetic results may elucidate functional insights not possible via either type of information in isolation. Here we use the genotype and DNA methylation (DNAm) data from cord blood and peripheral blood to identify SNPs associated with DNA methylation (meQTL lists). Additionally, we use publicly available fetal brain and lung meQTL lists to assess enrichment of ASD GWAS results for tissue-specific meQTLs.

Exaggerated CpH methylation in the autism-affected brain.

Background: The etiology of autism, a complex, heritable, neurodevelopmental disorder, remains largely unexplained. Given the unexplained risk and recent evidence supporting a role for epigenetic mechanisms in the development of autism, we explored the role of CpG and CpH (H = A, C, or T) methylation within the autism-affected cortical brain tissue.

Methods: Reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) was completed, and analysis was carried out in 63 post-mortem cortical brain samples (Brodmann area 19) from 29 autism-affected and 34 control individuals.

Transcriptome analysis reveals dysregulation of innate immune response genes and neuronal activity-dependent genes in autism.

Recent studies of genomic variation associated with autism have suggested the existence of extreme heterogeneity. Large-scale transcriptomics should complement these results to identify core molecular pathways underlying autism. Here we report results from a large-scale RNA sequencing effort, utilizing region-matched autism and control brains to identify neuronal and microglial genes robustly dysregulated in autism cortical brain.

RNA-Seq optimization with eQTL gold standards.

Background: RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq) experiments have been optimized for library preparation, mapping, and gene expression estimation. These methods, however, have revealed weaknesses in the next stages of analysis of differential expression, with results sensitive to systematic sample stratification or, in more extreme cases, to outliers. Further, a method to assess normalization and adjustment measures imposed on the data is lacking.