Just as we thought Omicron was rolling across the US and into oblivion, a new “subvariant” has arrived and is, again, taking…
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post Omicron Evolves and the Covidization of Scientific PublishingRead more
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post DNA in Strange Places: Hippo Poop, Zoo Air, and Cave DirtRead more
Many years ago, a dear friend took me to the Detroit zoo to see the Hippoquarium. Much to my delight, the resident…
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post Pandemic Predictions Take a Turn Towards the Positive – FinallyRead more
An end may be in sight. For the first time since the pandemic began, I listened to a press briefing from medical…
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post Please Help My Liberian “Son” Achieve his Dream as an Infectious Disease PhysicianRead more
For many years I’ve ended editions of my human genetics textbook with a request for students to email me to share their…
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post Sandy From the Mountains Dies, Leaving a Message to the UnvaxxedRead more
Five days ago, Sandy’s husband allowed the staff in the ICU to turn off her life support, and COVID claimed yet another…
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post Pandemic Too Fast to Follow as Three Waves of Infection Wash Over the US: Delta, Omicron, and FluRead more
Next Tuesday, December 21, marks two years since the China CDC Weekly acknowledged the first “cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown…
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post How Watson and Crick Predicted the Origin of Omicron and Laid the Groundwork for COVID-19 VaccinesRead more
The tantalizing final sentence to James Watson and Francis Crick’s landmark 1953 paper in Nature introducing the genetic material, DNA, is almost…
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post Progress in Treating Genetic Disease: Dwarfism, Inborn Errors, Immune Deficiencies, and a Clotting DisorderRead more
It’s been nearly a decade since my book The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It, was published. The…
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post Menkes Disease Treatment on the Horizon, After Nearly Three DecadesRead more
Headlines often trumpet the latest in gene editing, RNA drugs, or gene therapy. The less buzzy, but more classic strategy of providing…
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post A Glimpse of the Ocean’s Twilight Zone Through Environmental DNARead more
To most people the Twilight Zone evokes memories of Rod Serling’s iconic TV series of the 1950s and 1960s, or the less…
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post Looking Back 20 Years After the Unveiling of the First Human Genome SequenceRead more
I’m about to begin revising the 14th edition of my human genetics textbook. In normal times, I’d have amassed technical articles and…
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post Leaping Lizards Regenerate Limbs, Thanks to CRISPR and Stem CellsRead more
I’ve admired the cockroach’s ability to regrow lost legs since learning about them while working on my PhD in developmental genetics ages…