Jessica D. Ayers

Welcome to Science interrupted

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 11:37:10 -0800

Welcome to Science interrupted, my blog for what I think about when my adventures in science are interrupted by my real life.

When I started my adventures into science, realistically when undergraduate me decided that getting a Ph.D. was what I wanted to do with my life, I assumed that getting a Ph.D. would be an all-absorbing, determined, and fulfilling adventure. In a lot of ways, that is a pretty accurate way to describe the process. But at the same time, this is wildly inaccurate. Science can be all-consuming, but real life tends to happen anyway. And, at least for me, my adventures in real life have been just as important as my adventures in science for helping me think about science.

For more context, let me give a few examples of what I mean and how real life has interfered to help my science. Broadly speaking, I study the psychological and behavioral manifestations of genetic conflict. Or, more plainly, I study why your genes don’t agree on who you are and who you are going to be. Think back to high school biology and sex ed classes. We’re taught that humans reproduce when sperm meets egg and - BOOM - there is a new human! This is a good way to teach high schoolers the basics of reproduction, but this isn’t the whole story. In reality, humans have a bunch of these really cool imprinted genes that come from our parents - ones that come from our moms have maternal interests imprinted and those that come from our dads have paternal interests imprinted. It is these imprinted genes, and their genetic interests, that can be in conflict with one another. Scientists can see signs of these conflicts as soon as conception happens - in fact, there is a decent amount of research looking at differences in imprinted gene expression in the placenta during pregnancy^1–3 (the placenta is probably the coolest organ you know nothing about, by the way), how these...Read More

Science interrupted by.... more science communication

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 09:07:33 -0700

Friendships aren’t just about keeping score – new psychology research looks at why we help our friends when they need it
Friendship isn’t about a running tally of who’s doing more.
miodrag ignjatovic/E+ via Getty Images

Jessica D. Ayers, Boise State University and Athena Aktipis, Arizona State University

Despite how natural friendship can feel, people rarely stop to analyze it. How do you know when someone will make a good friend? When is it time to move on from a friendship? Oftentimes, people rely on gut intuitions to answer these kinds of questions.
In psychology research, there’s no universally accepted definition of a friend. Traditionally, when psychologists have analyzed friendship, it’s often been through the lens of exchange. How much did that friend do for me? How much did I do for them? The idea is that friendships are transactional, where friends stick around only as long as they...Read More

Science interrupted by .... science communication

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 14:19:14 -0800

This time on Science interrupted I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the importance of science communication (and toot my own horn and share a recent piece I had published in The Conversation).

One of the biggest challenges for researchers is trying to get the word out there about their research. I don't mean this in the sense of "people need to know my name so I can become famous" but rather that scientsts want to get their work out there to others who can use the findings for a bigger purpose. Scientists normally spend so much time within the academic sphere, focusing on talking to other scientsts about the importance of their work, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this translates into the wider public learning about the current research being done.

This is where science communication comes in. Since communication is a way for scientists to talk about the importance of their work in their own words in a place where the general public can learn about it. For the last few months, I've been working on a public piece about what genetic conflict is an why more research on genetic conflict is needed. I'm extremely proud to share the article here (in case you haven't seen it already)! You can see the original piece here - https://theconversation.com/pregnancy-is-a-genetic-battlefield-how-conflicts-of-interest-pit-moms-and-dads-genes-against-each-other-193807

I hope you enjoy it!
Pregnancy is a...Read More

Science interrupted... by multitasking

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 22:17:02 -0700

This time on Science interrupted I’m going to talk to you about how my adventures in science have been completely interrupted by my bizarre multitasking.
Bear with me, but over the pandemic I have picked up one seriously toxic trait - I sign up for literally any and every conference that I have access to. To the point that this summer I attended more conferences and workshops than I normally would in an entire year (which meant that my daughter also got to go to more conferences than she would have, had these been in-person meetings - wooohoo for making academic parenting much easier). Some of the conferences have been super methodology heavy (like the summer forum on Dynamic Modeling and Behavioral Data Science Meeting), others were steeped in theory (such as the Human Behavior and Evolution Society’s annual conference - you can watch my talk at this conference here), and others provided huge potential learning opportunities, as they were so far outside of my research specialties (such as the Evolutionary Medicine Summer Institute meeting). While this has been an extremely wonderful experience for me professionally, it’s meant I’ve had very little time to do other fun things (like write blog posts!).
On top of this craziness, summer is normally the time when academics buckle down and write up all of the projects they have been working on for the previous nine (plus) months. For me, this meant writing, editing, submitting, revising and resubmitting, and, eventually, finishing up some projects that I’ve been working on for the past few years. Practically, that meant that July was a complete bust because I needed to put a lot of effort getting four of these projects over the...Read More

Science interrupted ... by the third brain

Mon, 17 May 2021 23:21:55 -0700

This time on Science interrupted I’m going to talk to you about how my adventures in science were interrupted by the third brain¹ -- the almighty placenta
So why placentas? Back story - I proposed my dissertation a few weeks ago. Going through that whole process (which in and of itself is a monster project) has given me a ton of opportunities to watch a ton of cool talks and read a ton of cool books and articles about the placenta, pregnancy, and postpartum periods. It has also given me a unique (and strange) opportunity to watch my research interest play out in my own life -- I am a new parent of a spunky little opinionated 7-month-old.
So here are some cool facts I’ve been learning about the placenta, the coolest organ that you know pretty much nothing about. This post mainly deals with the functions and structure of the placenta. In another blog post, I’ll talk about all the cool stuff the placenta does but first we have to talk about the basic biology of the placenta to set the stage.
The placenta is the interface of all maternal and fetal interactions throughout the course of pregnancy. Need some resources so the fetus can grow big and strong? The placenta’s got your back! Due to this extremely intimate connection, most common opinions of pregnancy (and by extension, common views of the placenta) are seen as cooperative. But this isn’t the whole story -- in fact, the placenta is genetically identical to the fetus² and is predominated by paternally...Read More

Science interrupted ... by milkshakes

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 22:45:24 -0700

This time on Science interrupted I’m going to talk to you about how my adventures in science were interrupted by milkshakes. Besides being delicious, they also make a great analogy for explaining how genetic conflict during pregnancy can have some pretty far-reaching consequences.
David Haig¹ was one of the first scientists to describe how genetic conflict manifests across pregnancy. The paper provides a very thorough overview of the biology behind genetic conflict (and by thorough, I mean this paper is as dense as they come -- I’ve read it at least five times and still don’t think I fully understand all parts), but the main point of the paper boils down to a few main points.
Pregnancy is often viewed as cooperative since mom and fetus have (some of) the same genes that should be working towards the same outcome.
But fetuses also have genes in common with their dads, so not all of their genetic interests are perfectly aligned with the mother’s.
This conflict of genetic interests can set up situations where there are negative outcomes for both mother and fetus (think pregnancy complications).
Two prime examples of genetic conflict leading to adverse outcomes come from the literature on gestational diabetes and preeclampsia.
A lot of the literature on genetic conflict during pregnancy centers on two central themes: there is conflict over mom’s blood pressure, and there is conflict over mom’s blood sugar. This makes sense when we remember that all of the nutrients that fetuses need are provided via the mom’s circulatory system. Sugars, proteins, vitamins, minerals, oxygen, and all other nutrients are passed to the placenta (and, eventually, the fetus) from the mom’s bloodstream and all of the fetus’s waste products are passed through the placenta for the mom’s body to get rid of....Read More

Science interrupted... by baby ducklings

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 22:29:41 -0700

This time on Science interrupted I’m going to talk to you about how my adventures in science were interrupted by baby ducklings. And not just because we are in the time of year when Facebook spams me with cute videos of baby ducks following their mama duck around.
If you have taken a basic introduction to psychology course, then you have probably heard of Lorenz’s work with baby ducks¹ -- specifically, that ducks are one of many species that imprint on others shortly after birth. It is this imprinting that then leads to attachment to the imprinted object. In normal scenarios, baby ducks imprint onto their moms and form attachments with their moms. But, with Lorenz’s work, baby ducks (ok it was really geese, but geese aren’t as cute as ducks) who saw Lorenz shortly after they hatched imprinted onto Lorenz, thought that he was their mom, and followed him everywhere (you can find out more here).
Besides being incredibly adorable, the concept of imprinting in attachment systems is a really good example for explaining how imprinting in genes works (I also want to thank a fellow NPR SciCommer for pointing out that I haven’t clearly explained imprinting in my other posts, and inspiring my obsession with baby ducks over the past few days).
Think of imprinted genes as baby ducks, and the parent of origin (PO for short because my husband vetoed using POO as an acronym) as the mother duck. When imprinted genes are “born” -- aka, they make it into sperm or egg cells -- they imprint on the first thing they “see” -- aka, they embody your gene’s fitness “interests”-- and behave in ways that are in alignment with these interests. In this case, it means that the imprinted genes remember their PO and behave in ways to help their PO’s interests, even when they have made it into a new individual.
All of this imprinting...Read More

Science interrupted ... by Neanderthals

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 22:13:25 -0700

This time on Science interrupted I’m going to talk to you about how my adventures in science were interrupted by neanderthal DNA. And why you, like me, may have your neanderthal ancestors to thank for why you don’t get sick.
Neanderthals are the closest relative to humans when we look at our family tree¹, having close to 99.6% of their DNA in common with our own. For a while, scientists considered our species to be completely separate from theirs. But more recent research has suggested that homo sapiens (us) and Neanderthals were closer than that - in fact, they most likely fell in love, got married, and had babies together. OK, that’s a little bit of a dramatization of what probably happened, but homo sapiens and neanderthals did have children together^2–4. This is why many people alive today, including yours truly, have Neanderthal DNA in their DNA (side note: 23 & Me gives an estimate of this in their genetic profiling, which is how I found out that I have more Neanderthal DNA than 95% of 23 & Me users. Which, when we look at how much of my DNA is Neanderthal in origin, comes out to be less than 2% of my total DNA. Guess I’m just human after all).
So why the hangup on Neanderthal DNA? Last week I was alerted to some recent research suggesting that Neanderthal DNA may actually be playing a role in if people get sick⁵. What’s cooler, or scarier depending on your outlook, is that this Neanderthal DNA seems to play a role in the severity of COVID-19 cases^6,7.
DNA from Neanderthals, people we often consider to be “primitive” losers that homo sapiens outcompeted, actually plays a role in determining how your body and immune system react if you contract COVID-19. How...Read More

Science interrupted ... by maternal antibodies

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 21:58:35 -0800

This time on Science interrupted I’m going to talk to you about how my adventures in science were interrupted by my maternal antibodies. And why this is literally the coolest thing I have ever experienced.
But first, let’s set the stage a little. About a week ago, my daughter was at the doctor for her four-month checkup and her four-month vaccinations. One of the vaccinations she got was for rotavirus and this vaccination comes in oral form (which, way to go modern science, oral vaccines are WAY easier for my daughter to take - she literally giggled the entire time she was getting the vaccine). After we got home 10 minutes later, I did what I always do when my daughter is anxious/ annoyed/ upset/ tired/ hungry. I nursed her until she fell asleep and then I went on with my day. Then, essentially out of nowhere, I felt sick. Like sinuses-are-full, immune-system-in-overdrive, hit-by-a-virus-bus sick. I was flabbergasted. What in the world was happening? Then it dawned on me - my baby had an oral vaccination. Then she nursed, while some of the vaccine was still in her mouth. My immune system was reacting to the inactive virus in her mouth, and building antibodies to send to her to fight the virus off for her.
Sure, my immune system was overreacting, but this is the coolest overreaction of all time. My immune system is doing what it is supposed to do, mounting an immune response to protect my baby.
One of the coolest facts about motherhood and breastfeeding that we aren’t taught in school is that, while a mother is breastfeeding, her body responds to the infant’s nutritional and immunological needs. Not only is breastmilk a source of nutrition, but breastmilk also passes antibodies, microbes, and hormones onto the baby^1–4. The hormones, microbes, and antibodies start setting up the baby’s biological systems to grow and develop.
But...Read More

Science interrupted ... by fetal microchimerism

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 22:56:37 -0800

This time on Science interrupted I’m going to talk to you about how my adventures in science were interrupted by fetal microchimerism. And why that is so totally cool.
For a little backstory, a lot of what I’m going to talk about requires you to have some fundamental knowledge about the placenta (if you want some more detailed reading, I highly recommend The Evolution of the Human Placenta). After conception happens, the placenta is the first organ that begins to form^1,2. Most of the first trimester of pregnancy is devoted to placental growth³ - while the placenta continues to grow with the fetus throughout pregnancy, the placenta “takes over” and starts interacting with the maternal system. The placenta is a massive endocrine organ⁴ that transfers nutrients, oxygen, hormones, and waste products between mom and fetus^5–8. But in addition to transferring these products between mom and fetus, the placenta can also transfer fetal cells into the mom’s body! (I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, the placenta is probably the coolest organ you know nothing about)
The cells that the placenta sends into mom’s body are called fetal microchimeric cells (meaning cells from two different sources that live together in one individual - in this case, cells from mom and fetus living together in mom’s body). If you (or someone you know) has ever talked about finding out about their fetus’s health or sex through a blood test, you are already familiar with this concept. The fetal cells that are in mom’s circulatory...Read More