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The Curious Genetics of Werewolves

By Ricki Lewis, PhD
Posted: December 27, 2012

Category: Uncategorized | Tagged Ambras syndrome, hair follicle, hypertrichosis, Sox9, Trsp1, werewolves | 10 Comments

About DNA Science Blog

Geneticist Ricki Lewis blogs from the cutting edge of genomics, including genetic testing, stem cells, gene therapy and more.

Ricki Lewis is a science writer with a PhD in genetics. The author of several textbooks and thousands of articles in scientific, medical, and consumer publications, Ricki's first narrative nonfiction book, "The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It," was published by St. Martin's Press in March 2012. In addition to writing, Ricki provides genetic counseling for parents-to-be at CareNet Medical Group in Schenectady, NY and teaches "Genethics" an online course for master's degree students at the Alden March Bioethics Institute of Albany Medical Center.
April 2014

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- Call the Midwife Evokes Cystic Fibrosis in a Simpler Time April 10, 2014
  Previous posts bashing SyFy’s Helix and Dan Brown’s Inferno might suggest that I’m hypercritical of TV and films. Happily, the third season premiere of BBC’s excellent Call the Midwife shows that it is indeed possible to get the science right while telling a compelling story, without special effects and nonsensical intrigue.… Read the restThe post Call the M […]
  Ricki Lewis, PhD
- ALS Treatment (in Cells) – Too Late for Glenn, But Wonderful News April 3, 2014
  I was cutting and pasting a post about Sunday night’s episode of Call the Midwife, which was about cystic fibrosis, when a news release came in that brought me to tears. Kevin Eggan and co-workers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have discovered that the seizure drug Potiga (retigabine), FDA-approved in 2010, apparently tempers the hyperexcitability of neu […]
  Ricki Lewis, PhD
- Signal Transduction: Poetry in Motion March 27, 2014
  When I was in school, the scary parts of biology were cellular respiration and the synthesis and degradation pathways of the 20 amino acids. Each of us probably has our own personal bionightmares. For today’s students it could be all those interconnected pathways that depict the signals, receptors, second messengers and beyond that enable cells to function a […]
  Ricki Lewis, PhD
- A Challenge to the Supremacy of DNA as the Genetic Material March 20, 2014
  About a month ago, a news release stood out among the many I get every day: “A challenge to the genetic interpretation of biology,” from a physicist and chemist from Finland, Arto Annila and Keith Baverstock. They’d just published “Genes without prominence: a reappraisal of the foundations of biology,” in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.… Read the […]
  Ricki Lewis, PhD
- Clinical Whole Genome Sequencing: Not Quite Ready for Prime Time? March 13, 2014
  When I posted “Why I Don’t Want to Know My Genome Sequence here in November 2012, I got a lot of grief. Still do. Now researchers at Stanford University have put whole genome sequencing (WGS) of genetically healthy folks to a limited but telling test, and the results appear in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.… Read the restThe post Cl […]
  Ricki Lewis, PhD
- Mitohype: 3-Parent Designer Babies Who Will Change Human Evolution March 6, 2014
  If I turned in a 20,337 word article and the editor decided to replace 37 of those words, would I call her a co-author? Certainly not. So why does replacing 37 genes in a fertilized ovum destined to develop into a sick child conjure up images of ménages-a-trois in Petri dishes and mingling chromosomes?… Read the restThe post Mitohype: 3-Parent Designer Babie […]
  Ricki Lewis, PhD
- Rare Disease Day 2014: A Parent Fights to Cure Blindness February 27, 2014
  For Rare Disease Day 2014 tomorrow, I’ve asked Kristin Smedley, president and co-founder of the Curing Retinal Blindness Foundation, to guest post. I introduced her here last year, Rare Disease Day: What 5 Kids With Low Vision Can Do.… Read the restThe post Rare Disease Day 2014: A Parent Fights to Cure Blindness appeared first on DNA Science Blog.
  Ricki Lewis, PhD
- Exon Skipping: Borrowing from Nature to Treat Rare Genetic Diseases February 20, 2014
  Imagine selecting, copying, and pasting this sentence into a new document, but dropping or adding a word. The meaning might change — in the copy. The same thing – gaining or losing information – can happen to a gene, because like sentences built of words, most genes come in pieces.… Read the restThe post Exon Skipping: Borrowing from Nature to Treat Rare Gen […]
  Ricki Lewis, PhD
- Patient-Specific Stem Cells Recapitulate Age-Related Macular Degeneration February 13, 2014
  Stem cell debate and hype continue, with each advance distancing the field from embryos while promising replacement parts as stem cells “turn into” everything from hearts to gizzards. Meanwhile, many researchers have been quietly pursuing the immediate promise of the cells – conjuring the beginnings of diseases in dishes.… Read the restThe post Patient-Speci […]
  Ricki Lewis, PhD
- Probing Polar Bodies to Pick Disease-Free Embryos February 6, 2014
  After writing eleven editions of a human genetics textbook, I automatically assign chapter numbers to exciting new findings. But the 3-page case report in this week’s JAMA Neurology on selecting disease-free embryos tangled up my brain with all its connections.… Read the restThe post Probing Polar Bodies to Pick Disease-Free Embryos appeared first on DNA Sci […]
  Ricki Lewis, PhD

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