Posts are appearing on my Facebook feed warning against the dangers of eating tilapia. So I decided to do a little research…
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post Tilapia: Freak Farmed Fish or Evolutionary Rock Star?
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post Don’t Tell Me My DCIS Isn’t Cancer!
“DCIS isn’t really cancer. You have nothing to worry about,” said my oncologist confidently. “Then why am I having a mastectomy in…
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post Jackass Genomics – Did Donkeys Arise from an Inverted Chromosome?
In the world of genome sequencing, donkeys haven’t received nearly as much attention as horses. But now a report on a new-and-improved…
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post A Hiccup in Gene Therapy Progress?
Zebrafish, roundworms, fruit flies, mice, rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, pigs, and monkeys provide steppingstones to clinical trials to evaluate new treatments for…
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post 20 Gene Variants and Transgender Identity: What Does It Mean?
The week started strangely. On Monday morning, the author of a new book on transgender identity emailed me, asking about my research…
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post The Biology Behind the Fertility Clinic Meltdown
The spindle apparatus is among the most elegant structures in a cell, quickly self-assembling from microtubules and grabbing and aligning chromosomes so…
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post Can Liquid Biopsies Compete with Scopes and Scans in Cancer Diagnosis?
March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, the perfect time to bring up the value of colonoscopies and mammograms. These procedures may…
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post Rare Disease Week Through a New Lens: Having a Common Disease, Breast Cancer
It’s Rare Disease Week, and this year I’m thinking about it in a new way. My experience with breast cancer has been…
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post How rare is rare? And other common FAQs on “Rare Disease Day”
To mark Rare Disease Day 2018 (Feb 28), we repost this explainer from DNA Science blogger, geneticist and rare disease specialist Ricki…
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post Tracking RNA to Pinpoint Time of Death: Better Than Bugs?
DNA is a persistent molecule. Genome sequencing is possible for creatures as ancient as mummies and mammoths. But the messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules…
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post From Blue Lights to Gene Therapy: The Intriguing History of Crigler-Najjar Syndrome
Seeing Crigler-Najjar syndrome among this week’s news releases announcing upcoming gene therapy clinical trials conjured immediate images of an Amish farmhouse with…
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post Gene Therapy for the “Butterfly Children”
Videos of the “butterfly children” are difficult to watch. The name comes from the delicate skin of people who have epidermolysis bullosa…