Blog

What quantum mechanics says about measurement, where observer and observed are genuinely coupled in biology, and why a longitudinal personal dataset has to account for the effect of measuring on the person measured.

Michael Levin's "Ingressing Minds" asks where the shape and behavior of never-before-existing organisms come from. We read the paper, weigh its proposal against the mainstream view, and connect it to de-extinction and to the difference between simulating data and fitting models to it.

A practical comparison of Oxford Nanopore, Illumina, Element, PacBio, and Sanger for sequencing one person's genome: why we would choose nanopore long reads, what to ask a provider for, and the pipeline we would run on the output.

A practical comparison of DNA methylation tests: which array, which clocks, how to get the raw IDATs, and how to process them yourself with sesame and dnaMethyAge. Plus the noise sources that make a single epigenetic age number close to meaningless.

A CGM measures the output of your glucose system, not its input. Here is what a sensor can and cannot tell you about insulin sensitivity, and the paired measurements that make the trace interpretable.

Over-the-counter continuous glucose monitors are now sold directly to adults in the US. Which one to buy, what their accuracy numbers mean, how to export the data, and what to compute once you have it.

The Sinclair-associated biological age test is a buccal DNA methylation clock. Here is what methylation clocks measure, how noisy they are, and how to get data you can analyze yourself.

A FoundMyFitness report is a literature annotation layer on top of a consumer genotyping array. Here's how to audit the underlying file, rebuild the analysis yourself, and understand where array data runs out.

A working guide to the free DNA upload sites worth using, what each one does with your file, and how to run the same annotation, polygenic scoring, and relative-matching analyses yourself on your own machine.

A step-by-step method for pulling rs1801133 and rs1801131 out of a 23andMe, AncestryDNA, or WGS file yourself, getting the strand right, and understanding what the result does and does not tell you.

There is no single 'Huberman blood test.' Here is the panel that gets discussed on the podcast, which markers carry real signal, and how to get the data in a form you can analyze yourself.

Monthly blood work is physiologically safe for almost everyone, but most analytes change slower than the noise floor of the assay. Here is how to pick a testing interval per marker, standardize the draw, and detect real change in your own data.

A technical read of the MPMD/Marek Health blood panel: which assays are chosen well, which markers mislead in trained people, how to control pre-analytic noise, and where a large chemistry panel stops telling you anything new.

A working guide to interpreting raw genotype files from 23andMe or Ancestry, converting them to VCF, annotating variants, and knowing where array data stops being useful.

A working guide to taking a 23andMe/Ancestry export or a whole-genome FASTQ, converting it to an annotated VCF, filtering it sensibly, and knowing which results are real.

A practical guide to building violin plots from bulk and single-cell RNA-seq counts: which normalization to plot, how to set kernel bandwidth and trimming, and how to read the shapes without fooling yourself.

A technical account of whole genome sequencing as a data product: coverage and chemistry, file formats, a pipeline we would run, and the questions a genome can and cannot answer.

Master the bio design challenge in 2026. Learn formats, workflows, and tools to turn your biological concept into a winning prototype.

A practical guide to noncanonical amino acids. Learn to incorporate ncAAs, explore therapeutic applications, and navigate pitfalls efficiently.

Our 2026 design guide rna for crispr shows you how to select targets, predict off-targets, and build a robust validation pipeline for better results.