How to make stone soup: Is the "Paleo diet" a missed opportunity for anthropologists?

For the past few years, people everywhere have been "going Paleo." Websites and social media touting the benefits of eating a "Paleo diet" and following a "Paleolithic life style" serve as calls to arms for health-conscious individuals seeking information about the latest health and fitness trends. Many of these people participate in programs such as Crossfit, which involve major social and life-style modification components and therefore facilitate the dissemination of dietary fads.1 The PALEOf(x)TM conference, which bills itself as "the world's premier holistic wellness event," has attracted sellout crowds of thousands of attendees for the last four years.2 Consumers can wear Paleo clothing, download Paleo shopping and exercise apps to their smartphones, order prepackaged Paleo food, prepare it using Paleo cooking implements, or expediently buy Paleo convenience foods from Paleodiet™ vending machines3 and "Cultured Caveman" food trucks.4 The Paleo diet is touted by movie stars, reality TV personalities, and professional athletes, including LeBron James and the entire Miami Dolphins NFL team.5,6 Books with titles such as The Primal Blueprint,7 Cavewomen Don't Get Fat,8 and Paleo Perfected9 (the latter by the stodgy America's Test Kitchen) are legion, and many are bestsellers.

Variation in genes related to cochlear biology is strongly associated with adult-onset deafness in border collies.

Domestic dogs can suffer from hearing losses that can have profound impacts on working ability and quality of life. We have identified a type of adult-onset hearing loss in Border Collies that appears to have a genetic cause, with an earlier age of onset (3-5 years) than typically expected for aging dogs (8-10 years). Studying this complex trait within pure breeds of dog may greatly increase our ability to identify genomic regions associated with risk of hearing impairment in dogs and in humans. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to detect loci underlying adult-onset deafness in a sample of 20 affected and 28 control Border Collies. We identified a region on canine chromosome 6 that demonstrates extended support for association surrounding SNP Chr6.25819273 (p-value = 1.09 × 10(-13)). To further localize disease-associated variants, targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) of one affected and two unaffected dogs was performed. Through additional validation based on targeted genotyping of additional cases (n = 23 total) and controls (n = 101 total) and an independent replication cohort of 16 cases and 265 controls, we identified variants in USP31 that were strongly associated with adult-onset deafness in Border Collies, suggesting the involvement of the NF-κB pathway. We found additional support for involvement of RBBP6, which is critical for cochlear development. These findings highlight the utility of GWAS-guided fine-mapping of genetic loci using targeted NGS to study hereditary disorders of the domestic dog that may be analogous to human disorders.