“Some of the most interesting findings in science happen on fishing exhibitions. No, I don’t mean going out on a boat (although lots of cool things have been found that way); I mean just gathering lots of data and seeing what you can find.
Something really interesting came out of just such a project from the lab of Dr. Mike Snyder at Stanford University. He set out to study himself in every way possible over a period of a few years. His lab looked at his DNA, how his DNA was being used, what sorts of things were in his blood, what his immune system was doing and lots more. His lab also then determined how these things changed over the course of the experiment.
One of the most fascinating things to come out of this study so far was actually a bit of a lucky break (for science, not for Mike). Over the course of the experiment, Mike developed type 2 diabetes. And not only did we get to pretty much watch this happen in real time, but we also got to see that it might have been caused in a totally unexpected way—a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. To my knowledge, this is the first time the progression to type 2 diabetes has been seen to be caused by a virus and also seen in such detail.”
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