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 Jackass Genomics – Did Donkeys Arise from an Inverted Chromosome?Read more
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post A Hiccup in Gene Therapy Progress?Read more
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?Read more
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 MeltdownRead more
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?Read more
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 CancerRead more
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”Read more
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?Read more
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 SyndromeRead more
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”Read more
Videos of the “butterfly children” are difficult to watch. The name comes from the delicate skin of people who have epidermolysis bullosa…
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post CRISPR Gene Editing of Neurons in Prader-Willi SyndromeRead more
I’m happy to see that fears about using CRISPR to edit human genes have dampened over the past year, but it’s still…
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post A Closer Genetic Look at the Quagga, an Extinct ZebraRead more
Like the dodo bird, heath hen, and woolly mammoth, the quagga vanished so recently that glimpsing its evolution is possible, using DNA…