Last March, my husband Larry and I attended the annual gala for the Curing Retinal Blindness Foundation, near Philadelphia. During the cocktail…
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post Help Young, Blind Musician Meet Bruce Springsteen!Read more
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post CF Rx: ExerciseRead more
We can’t change our genes – yet – but we can alter our environments to ease life with an inherited illness. Meet…
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post When a Bad Animal Model is Good: Cystic FibrosisRead more
A “good” animal model is one that has the same symptoms of a disease that we do, right? Not always. Sometimes we…
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post Can a Quirky Chromosome Create a Second Human Species?Read more
In this age of genome sequencing, we can lose sight of the importance of how our genomes are distributed over 23 pairs…
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post Why Count Stools in the Human Microbiome?Read more
Last week, a not-yet-accepted-for-publication paper challenged the long-held view that bacterial cells outnumber human cells in a body 10 to 1. As…
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post Hannah’s 2016: From Curling Toes to Gene TherapyRead more
Eleven-year-old Hannah Sames can still curl her toes, just barely. But time is running out. If Hannah can move her toes for…
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post Rerun: Dan Brown’s “Inferno”: Good Plot, Bad ScienceRead more
I’m thrilled that DNA Science made the top 15 PLOS blog posts of 2015, but a little surprised that the entry was…
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post Precision Medicine Initiative – Ricki’s Pick for Breakthrough of the YearRead more
‘Tis the season for Science magazine to name their Breakthrough of the Year, a designation that typically irks me because it implies…
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post Genes That Protect Against Dementia (Maybe)Read more
“Survival of the fittest” is one of the most misunderstood terms in biology. Evoking images of physical prowess, it actually refers to…
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post A Conversation with CRISPR-Cas9 Inventors Charpentier and DoudnaRead more
At the American Society of Human Genetics meeting in October, CRISPR-Cas9 inventors Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier accepted the Gruber Genetics Prize, then…
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post Turkey Genetics 101Read more
I love watching the turkeys on Martha’s Vineyard. They travel in small family groups of two parents with chicks and adolescents, coalescing…
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post Will Layla Save Gene Editing?Read more
I had planned to blast last Thursday’s news of the use of gene-editing to save a British baby from aggressive leukemia. “Two…