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Hello Reddit, My name is Jackson Champer and I am postdoc at Cornell. My research focuses on gene drives, which are genes designed to spread rapidly through populations. A successful gene drive in mosquitoes could help fight vector borne diseases such as malaria and dengue. Together with my coauthors, I recently published a study titled “Novel CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive constructs reveal insights into mechanisms of resistance allele formation and drive efficiency in genetically diverse populations” in PLOS Genetics. We found that resistance alleles, which prevent the spread of the gene drive, can form in both the germline and in the embryo stages in fruit flies. We utilized the nanos promoter for better gene drive performance, and we also found that gene drive could produce greater or smaller numbers of resistance alleles, depending on the genetic background of the insect. Since our PLOS Genetics article was submitted, we have taken the first steps towards reducing resistance allele formation. A preprint of our new results is available on bioRxiv I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask me Anything! I also post occasional research updates and links to gene drive papers on Twitter, follow me @Jackson_Champer.

ACS AMA Hi Reddit! I’m Alexa Billow. I’m a writer for ACS Reactions https://www.youtube.com/user/ACSReactions, a YouTube show about chemistry from the American Chemical Society and PBS Digital Studios. We make fun zany videos about everything from the chemistry of wine myths to how astronaut pee could help us get to Mars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6x54zYuqXk). I’m also a freelance science writer whose work has appeared on SciShow and the Science Magazine YouTube channel and podcast. I’m also working on a new podcast effort for ACS, so if you want to head on over to http://bit.ly/rxnselements and tell us what you’d like to hear, I’d totally love that. I have a master’s degree in molecular biology that was meant to be a Ph.D. until I realized I can’t stand doing research and would rather be writing. That doesn’t mean that research isn’t important–just that people who are more patient than me should be doing it. I moved to Washington for an internship at Science and then joined ACS, and I love getting to write about science every day. Ask me anything about science writing, podcasting, writing about chemistry as a biologist, or finding your way to a career in science communication. I’ll be back at 1pm EDT (10am PDT, 5pm UTC) to start answering your questions. -ACS typeset edits EDIT: I have to run to a meeting! Thanks for all the great questions, everyone.

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Extreme temperature and precipitation events are often driven by unusual patterns in atmospheric circulation such as strong high and low pressure systems. Learning about these large-scale meteorological patterns improves our understanding of the physical mechanisms that cause extremes at local scales. Furthermore, because most climate models are challenged at resolving extremes at local scales, we can use the associated large-scale patterns as a way to analyze extremes in all climate models. In the Portland State University Climate Science Lab, one of our main focus areas is on gaining a better understanding of the driving large-scale patterns behind extremes in the historical record. This understanding gives us an observational foundation to evaluate climate model skill and assess projections of future changes in the conditions associated with extreme event. I will be back at 3 pm ET (12 pm PT) to answer your questions, Ask me anything!

Hi Reddit! I’m Dr. Deborah Ossip and I have been studying smoking behavior in teens and adults for more than 30 years. My research focus has included e-cigarettes and I am principal investigator on two NIH-funded projects around tobacco use, including one striving to engage underserved populations to call quitlines. I direct the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Smoking Research Program. I am also a Member Delegate for North America for the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and a member of various other local, state, national, and international committees, working groups, and advisory boards for tobacco prevention and control issues. I’m Dr. Scott McIntosh and I have been studying nicotine addiction and stop-smoking interventions for approximately 20 years. I have been involved with e-cigarette research in recent years and am the principal investigator of an NCI clinical trial investigating the use of web-assisted tobacco interventions (WATI) for community college students. I serve as Associate Director of the Smoking Research Program at the University of Rochester Medical Center and am Director of the Center for a Tobacco-Free Finger Lakes. We’re here to answer questions about e-cigs based on the latest research. We can also answer questions about nicotine addiction and what current research says about strategies to quit smoking. We’ll start answering questions at 1 p.m. EST.

ACS AMA Hi Reddit! My name is Suzanne Bell, and I am the Chair of the Department of Forensic and Investigative Science at West Virginia University. I teach and conduct research in analytical and forensic chemistry and work with students from undergraduate through PhD. I joined the faculty here in 2003. Prior to then, I worked for the New Mexico State Police Crime Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Eastern Washington University. My PhD is from New Mexico State University. Beyond my faculty work, I served on the National Commission on Forensic Science as Chair of the Research and Scientific Inquiry Subcommittee. I also served as a commissioner on the Forensic Education Programs Accreditation Commission, and am currently an associated editor for chemistry for the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Additionally, I am a member of the ACS Experts program (www.acs.org/expertshttp://www.acs.org/experts). This is my second AMA with the ACS – you can see the previous session here https://redd.it/35pi9d Continuing on with that discussion, there is a lot of chemical analysis that goes into determining what evidence gunshot residue might provide. Some of the methods we use include scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray spectroscopies including energy-dispersive (EDS), and many types of mass spectrometry (MS). Note that in this discussion I am not an expert on tool markings or ballistics (ie physical marks caused by weapons nor trajectory of bullets). Ask me anything about forensic chemistry and how we apply it in shooting cases, or what educational paths are possible in the forensic sciences. I’ll be back at 1 pm EDT (10 am PDT, 5 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything!

Hi reddit, my name is Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, and I have spent the last 11 years working with gender non-conforming and transgender children, adolescents and young adults. I am the Medical Director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. Our Center currently serves over 900 gender non-conforming and transgender children, youth and young adults between the ages of 3 and 25 years. I do everything from consultations for parents of transgender youth, to prescribing puberty blockers and gender affirming hormones. I am also spearheading research to help scientists, medical and mental health providers, youth, and community members understand the experience of gender trajectories from early childhood to young adulthood. Having a gender identity that is different from your assigned sex at birth can be challenging, and information available online can be mixed. I love having the opportunity to help families and young people navigate this journey, and achieve positive life outcomes. In addition to providing direct patient care for around 600 patients, I am involved in a large, multi-site NIH funded study examining the impact of blockers and hormones on the mental health and metabolic health of youth undergoing these interventions. Additionally, I am working on increasing our understanding of why more transyouth from communities of color are not accessing medical care in early adolescence. My research is very rooted in changing practice, and helping folks get timely and appropriate medical interventions. ASK ME ANYTHING! I will answer to the best of my knowledge, and tell you if I don’t know. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/management-of-gender-nonconformity-in-children-and-adolescents?source=search_result&search=transgender%20youth&selectedTitle=1~44 https://www.uptodate.com/contents/gender-development-and-clinical-presentation-of-gender-nonconformity-in-children-and-adolescents?source=search_result&search=transgender%20youth&selectedTitle=2~44 Here are a few video links and a bunch of videos on Kids in the House Here’s the stuff on my Wikipedia page I’ll be back at 2 pm EST to answer your questions, ask me anything!

Hi reddit! I’m Joshua Safer and I serve as the Medical Director of the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Boston Medical Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at the BU School of Medicine. I am a member of the Endocrine Society task force that is revising guidelines for the medical care of transgender patients, the Global Education Initiative committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the Standards of Care revision committee for WPATH, and I am a scientific co-chair for WPATH’s international meeting. My research focus has been to demonstrate health and quality of life benefits accruing from increased access to care for transgender patients and I have been developing novel transgender medicine curricular content at the BU School of Medicine. Recent papers of mine summarize current establishment thinking about the science underlying gender identity along with the most effective medical treatment strategies for transgender individuals seeking treatment and research gaps in our optimization of transgender health care. Here are links to 2 papers and to interviews from earlier in 2017: Evidence supporting the biological nature of gender identity Safety of current transgender hormone treatment strategies Podcast and a Facebook Live interviews with Katie Couric tied to her National Geographic documentary “Gender Revolution” (released earlier this year): Podcast, Facebook Live Podcast of interview with Ann Fisher at WOSU in Ohio I’ll be back at 12 noon EST. Ask Me Anything!

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Hi reddit! Since 1987 I have been an academic neurosurgeon at Stanford University. During my professional career I also invented the CyberKnife, and in doing so, the field of image-guided radiation. To date the CyberKnife has been used to treat more than one million patients, and derivative technologies have treated millions more. During my years in academia and the medical device industry I have come to appreciate the importance and power of peer-reviewed journals in guiding the practice of healthcare worldwide. From my own experience and frustration with the medical publishing process, I recently co-founded a next generation Open Access medical journal called Cureus. Peer-reviewed journals are an essential element of the bedrock underlying scientific progress. However, publishing in traditional journals has long been a time-consuming, complex and costly process. Although an unpaid workforce of highly skilled authors and reviewers does the hardest work in medical publishing, very expensive subscription fees typically limit the scope of readership. The alternative Open Access publishing system requires authors, many of whom lack significant research funding, to “pay to play.” Tragically, so many financial and procedural barriers are preventing the widespread generation and dissemination of medical knowledge, which as a point of fact, can be life saving in many cases. To my way of thinking something is very wrong with this existing system; access to advanced medical knowledge can and should be a human right! With this objective in mind, Cureus aspires to disrupt the status quo by making both the publishing and reading of quality peer-reviewed journal articles free, and thereby opening up the floodgates of medical knowledge to all of humanity. Now that you know what I’m up to, I turn the floor over to you - ask me anything about neurosurgery, Cureus, the CyberKnife, medical publishing or anything else that you can think of. I’ll be back at 1 pm EST to answer your questions. Bring it on!

EDIT: Thank you everybody for all the GREAT questions! Some of us will have to go do some sciencing, but we’ll keep checking in and continue to answer your questions - please keep ’em coming! Hi Reddit, We are a group of scientists who use genomic sequencing technology to study the spread of viruses during outbreaks. Most recently we’ve been exploring the spread of Zika virus across the Americas. In order to understand how the virus has spread, we sequenced the virus genome from samples obtained from infected individuals, as well as from the mosquitoes that transmit the virus. Analysis of the genomic data allowed us to show how Zika virus spread across South America and Central America, into the Caribbean, and from there into Florida in the United States. Our papers on Zika virus can be read for free here: Zika virus evolution and spread in the Americas by Metsky et al. Establishment and cryptic transmission of Zika virus in Brazil and the Americas by Faria et al. Genomic epidemiology reveals multiple introductions of Zika virus into the United States by Grubaugh et al. The following scientists will be participating in this AMA: Kristian Andersen, PhD, an Assistant Professor at The Scripps Research Institute and Director of Infectious Disease Genomics at the Scripps Translational Science Institute. Kristian has a background in host-pathogen evolution and immunology. Nathan Grubaugh, PhD, a Research Associate at The Scripps Research Institute. Nathan is a postdoc in the Andersen Laboratory and is an expert on mosquito-borne viruses, such as Zika, chikungunya, and West Nile. Hayden Metsky, a member of the Sabeti Lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Hayden is a graduate student in computer science at MIT and is interested in computational biology, machine learning, and their applications in viral genomics. Shirlee Wohl, a member of the Sabeti Lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Shirlee is a graduate student in Systems Biology at Harvard and is interested in using genomic approaches to understand viral disease transmission. Bronwyn MacInnis, PhD, is Associate Director of Malaria and Viral Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, with experience in combining genomic technologies and epidemiology to understand and control infectious diseases affecting global health. Jason Ladner, PhD, a member of the Center for Genome Sciences at USAMRIID. Jason is an evolutionary biologist who uses genetic data to understand the emergence and spread of pathogens. Nick Loman, PhD, is a Professor of Microbial Genomics and Bioinformatics at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the use of sequencing for the diagnosis and surveillance of infectious diseases. He has applied portable nanopore sequencing in field conditions in Guinea during the Ebola epidemic and in a mobile laboratory that travelled through Brazil to investigate Zika. Steve Schaffner, PhD, a senior staff scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is an ex-physicist who applies computational tools to study the population genetics of humans and their pathogens. Nathan Yozwiak, PhD, is Associate Director of Viral Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard with experience in using genomic technologies to detect and understand viruses and expanding these capabilities to regions at risk of serious outbreaks. We’ll be back at 1pm EST/ 10am PST to answer your questions. Ask us about genetics, genomics, virus biology, outbreak surveillance - ask us anything!