Gene activity in blood fluctuates more than expected—and that has consequences for medicine

Take a blood sample from someone in the dead of winter.

Take another in midsummer.

Same person, same laboratory.

And yet, at the level of gene activity, the molecular picture can look surprisingly different.

This is not an anomaly.

This, a new Nature Communications study argues, is simply how human biology works, and it has significant implications for the way biomarkers have traditionally been studied. ...