Ricki Lewis
Is tilapia a human-made freak that we should avoid — or an evolutionary rockstar?
Posts were appearing on my Facebook feed warning against the dangers of eating tilapia. So I decided to do a ...
Biological exceptionalism: How two Italian sisters lived to 100
In my endless email about COVID-19 popped up a new paper analyzing the health of two Italian sisters who lived ...
Here’s the straight poop about fecal transplants
Fecal transplants carry a certain ick factor for many people. But there is a legitimate medical use for them -- ...
What do ‘non-identical’ identical twins have to do with COVID-19? Mutations!
Identical twins Stella and Desiree Vignes were born in 1938 in a Louisiana town so small that it wasn’t on ...
Why is it so difficult to find a treatment for Huntington’s Disease?
The Huntington’s disease (HD) community has recently experienced setbacks, but a new research report may reignite hope, from an unexpected ...
How cats got their stripes: The mystery of color patterns in mammals
In 1902’s Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling famously explained how the leopard got his spots in what would today be deemed an ...
How Freddie Mercury got his voice: It wasn’t his teeth
Was Freddie Mercury's magnificent voice aided by a genetic defect? ...
Lax peer review + social media + confusing and misinterpreted data: Why so many COVID-era studies presented incomplete science
The pandemic has upended many practices, among them peer review of technical medical and scientific articles. Lax peer review + ...
Regrowing limbs using CRISPR? It’s been done with lizards, with hopes that human limb regeneration will be possible in the future
I’ve admired the cockroach’s ability to regrow lost legs since learning about them while working on my PhD in developmental ...
A lucky segment of the population is genetically immune to the COVID virus. What can we learn from them?
In March 2020, Eleanor A. had been sick for several days. Thinking it might be the new respiratory illness going ...
Viewpoint: Does mounting evidence for vaccine “durability” suggest we delay boosters for all until we learn more?
When President Biden announced that beginning the week of September 20, “anyone vaccinated on or before January 20 will be ...
Why the COVID-19 coronavirus continues to surprise us
As people in the US grapple with a return to masking to stay ahead of the delta and lambda variants ...
Hulu’s Rosemary’s Baby redux ‘False Positive’ bungles the science and stretches credulity
I looked forward to Hulu’s original horror film False Positive, pitched as a modern-day Rosemary’s Baby. It premiered at the Tribeca ...
Is Prevagen the ‘silver bullet’ supplement to treat Alzheimer’s disease? Distinguishing hope from hype in the battle against cognitive decline
The avalanche of TV ads for Prevagen that coincided with my reaching Medicare age has inspired me to investigate what’s ...
What our embattled world looks like through the ‘eyes’ of SARS-CoV-2
I’m tired of writing about COVID from a geneticist’s point of view, so I thought I’d let a virus speak ...
Incurable Huntington’s disease? microRNA offers hope in the wake of failed clinical trials
A recent DNA Science post considered the ebb and flow of treatment possibilities for Alzheimer’s disease. This week, it’s Huntington’s disease. Like ...
Good and bad news: What we know about vaccines and containing COVID variants
Glimmers of hope are beginning to shine through the gloom of the past year. That was evident in a recent ...
Debating the possible origins of COVID-19: A lab-escaped bioweapon? Animal poop? Random mutations of an existing virus?
“Virus outbreak: research says COVID-19 likely synthetic,” shouted the headline in the Taipei Times on February 23, 2020. The idea ...
Anxious about getting a COVID vaccine because you don’t know what’s in it? We know a lot more about it than the safety of hot dogs
“So, you’ve been eatin’ hot dogs and chicken nuggets all your life and you don’t want the vaccine ‘cuz you ...
Mosquito massacre: Can we safely tackle malaria with a CRISPR gene drive?
CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing quickly decimated two caged populations of malaria-bearing mosquitoes (Anopheles gambiae) in a recent study, introducing a new ...
When the faster-spreading and more virulent COVID-19 mutant came to my home town, it shook up everyone. Here’s an explainer of what it foreshadows
When a new variant of the COVID-19 virus appeared in the UK as 2020 drew to a close, I didn’t ...
Do you want to eat turkey or be the turkey: Reflect on this before you host a large gathering for Thanksgiving
My blog posts around Thanksgiving are predictably dull: Turkey Genetics 101, The Peaceable Genomes of Pumpkins. But 2020 is like no ...
Infographic: 5 different ways COVID vaccines work
COVID vaccine hesitancy is on the rise, perhaps in the wake of pressure to speed approval beyond scientific reason. But I think ...
‘Challenge studies’: Should we be testing COVID vaccines by intentionally infecting volunteers?
To those who’ve never thought about volunteering to be intentionally infected to test a vaccine, the idea may at first ...
The Three Stooges illustrate why coronavirus-fighting ‘antibody cocktails’ could help contain the virus well before a vaccine
“You imbecile!” bellowed Moe Howard as he stuck a finger up the nose of Curly. Moe the bully would often ...
The risks of using gene drives to get rid of ‘pesky species’
Using gene drives to eradicate pests has a potential downside—DNA is constantly changing. That means gene drives have the potential ...
Viewpoint: Prohibiting treatment of transgender teens ignores reality of gender dysphoria
New study delves into the genetics of individuals with gender dysphoria ...