> How do you use roam?
I use it to structure projects I do for work (and in my personal life, but these days that is mostly eating good food and taking walks - no need for roam there :) ). I also have my daily task lists in there. What I like about it is cross-linking, especially with people (so I can easily see what I do for which people). When I have to pull apart an article about a new series of exploits I create cross-referenced entries about the techniques in the article, this allows me to more quickly get up to speed with other articles I read (because they often refer to the same concepts).
As time has gone on I've started to use it for more things. In the beginning I just had a few files with my tasks, which was already better than what I had before. I use org-roam and sync my org-files to all my devices and backup spaces with syncthing and rclone (with the crypt backend), which is nice because it means my todo entries come with me. For most people that is probably not such a big thing because they can just use "regular" cloud sync, which I will not use because of privacy reasons.
> there are genetic databases online that you can manually reference your results against.
This is a good idea. Perhaps I will try that, thank you.
> a marker that indicates I may soon develop an untreatable degenerative disease
That is rough. I hope knowing about it earlier at least lets you take some palliative measures. Good luck.