In early spring, when I pull out the puniest of garden plants and toss them aside to make room for the more…
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post The Last Carolina Girl, a Novel, Echoes the Famous Case of Carrie Buck and the Eugenics MovementRead more
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post Memories of Craig VenterRead more
I was saddened to hear of Craig Venter’s passing at the age of 79, today, April 30, 2026. Often portrayed as the…
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post A Goldilocks Genetic Strategy to Combat Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl DiseaseRead more
My favorite part of the arrival of spring is getting back to the garden – especially tomatoes. But I’ve learned not to…
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post “Upgrade” Chillingly Conjures a Genetically-Enhanced WorldRead more
It was inevitable that sci-fi would take on genetic enhancement, but I somehow missed Blake Crouch’s brilliant 2022 dystopian novel Upgrade. He’s…
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post Is Measles Returning in a More Vicious Form?Read more
Eman, our informally adopted son who is a physician in Monrovia, Liberia, is recovering from the measles. He contracted it from a…
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post New Study Suggests Why the Mediterranean Diet is so Healthy – and a RecipeRead more
A Mediterranean diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, seeds, nuts, and especially olive oil, with a few heart-healthy cheese choices &ndash…
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post The Curious Genetics of Purring and MeowingRead more
Far more attention is paid to dog behavior than to cat behavior. So I was struck by a recent report in Plos…
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post Do Cats Get Dementia?Read more
Babycat may have been a “naturally occurring model of Alzheimer’s disease,” according to a new report in The European Journal of Neuroscience…
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post FDA’s New Plausible Mechanism Guidance for Implementing Gene Editing and RNA Therapies is Good News for the Rare Disease CommunityRead more
Last year, nine-month-old KJ Muldoon made history when a variation of CRISPR gene editing, called base editing, swapped one DNA building block…
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post Organoids Model Spinal Cord InjuriesRead more
Organoids are tiny bits of organs nurtured in lab glassware from stem cells. I joke about them at Halloween, when a few…
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post AI Analyzes Human Genomes and Foretells My Possible ObsolescenceRead more
(photo credit for Robot B-9 from the TV series Lost in Space (Creative Commons, Maker Faire 2008, San Mateo) I have a…
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post New Study on the Origin of Syphilis. America First?Read more
With the pandemic past and vaccine-preventable infectious diseases creeping back, we don’t think often about syphilis. A new report in Science, from…