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BIT

Master storytelling by Mike Birbiglia

Mike Birbiglia is a master storyteller. As a standup comedian, he has mastered the fundamental equation of comedy.

No, it’s not E = mc² . Rather it is: “tragedy + time = comedy.”

If you have listened to the OG podcast, This American Life, you may already be familiar with some of Mike Birbiglia’s stories. However, if you haven’t had the opportunity to hear him tell a tale, I recommend that you start with the movie adaptation of his one-man show, “Sleepwalk with Me.”

In the autobiographical movie, he tells his story of struggling as a standup comedian all the while developing rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder—which causes him to act out his dreams.

Not surprisingly, acting out your dreams dreams can have some dastardly consequences. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will give you a two word teaser—that if you watch this film—you yourself will never forget. La Quinta.

A not so funny note for those in medicine to add to their REM sleep behavior disorder illness script—it’s strongly associated with progression to the neurodegenerative disorder, Lewy body dementia.

BASE PAIR

Genome assemblies

Have you ever wondered why there are two different names for the same genome assembly, like GRCh38 and hg38? Or GRCh37 and hg19?

The Genome Reference Consortium (GRC) is the main source of human genome assembly data. The most recent human genome assembly version is GRCh38, released in 2013. The “h” in “GRCh” stands for “human.”

The GRC also maintains genome assembly data for rat (r), mouse (m), zebrafish (z), and chicken (g for gallus).

GRCh38 is referred to as “hg38” in the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) Genome Browser. The “hg” stands for “human genome.” Before the GRCh38 genome assembly, the version numbers of the GRC and UCSC Genome Browser genome assemblies did not match.

For example, when the GRCh37 genome assembly was released in 2009, the UCSC Genome Browser version was “hg19.” Therefore, to minimize confusion, starting with the GRCh38 genome assembly, the UCSC Genome Browser version number was matched as “hg38.”

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Views my own.