Like the dodo bird, heath hen, and woolly mammoth, the quagga vanished so recently that glimpsing its evolution is possible, using DNA…
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post A Closer Genetic Look at the Quagga, an Extinct Zebra
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post How Genetic Testing Guided My Breast Cancer Journey – To Eschewing Beef
Two months ago, I joined a club nobody wants to be a member of – the 1 in 8 women who develop…
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post In “The Power,” Epigenetics Turns Misogyny On Its Head
I was thrilled to see Naomi Alderman’s dystopian masterpiece, The Power, top Barack Obama’s list of his favorite books of 2017. OK…
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post DNA Science in 2017
The year has ended for me with an unexpected irony. On December 19, the FDA stamped its final approval on the first gene…
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post DNA Testing Kits as Holiday Gifts Can Bring Surprises
Lately people have been sending me their direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing results for help with interpretation. Although companies like 23andMe and ancestry.com do a…
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post An Argument Against Gene Drives to Extinguish New Zealand Mammals: Life Finds a Way
The mammals of New Zealand have long posed a threat to native species. The Predator Free 2050 program is an effort to rid…
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post The Peaceable Genomes of Pumpkins
Anyone who’s tossed a pumpkin onto the lawn after Halloween to discover vines snaking along the ground the next summer knows how…
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post The Biology of “Stranger Things’’
The Netflix series “Stranger Things,” although terrific, might ditch the clichéd doctor-scientist in charge and get themselves a developmental biologist, stat. The disseminated…
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post Revealing the Subtext in DNA Sequences
Whenever the first copy of a book I’ve written arrives on my doorstep, I’m afraid to look at it. I still haven’t…
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post Two New Ways to Treat A Deadly Disease: Spinal Muscular Atrophy
I don’t think I’ll ever tire of covering new ways to treat genetic diseases that I’d always thought hopeless. Teamed with expanded…
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post What Should Gene Therapy Cost?
By the time that the FDA’s advisory committee gave a near-instantaneous and unanimous thumbs-up for gene therapy to treat a form of hereditary…
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post As Blindness Gene Therapy Nears FDA Finish Line, A Shout-Out to Activist Families
On a spectacular September Sunday in 2008, 8-year-old Corey Haas, a cane in one hand and his mother’s hand in the other…