Ricki Lewis
Australia’s rabbit invasion: DNA analysis reveals how the European rabbit ‘colonized’ a continent
COVID and monkeypox seem to have come out of nowhere and exploded across continents. But the phenomenon of natural selection ...
Back from the dead? How OrganEx technology revived pigs dead for one hour, and why it could revolutionize transplants
Transplant medicine could take a giant leap forward if donor organs could soak up oxygen for longer and decay delayed ...
Revising my genetics textbook: A PC exercise or an appropriate evolution of science and sensitivity? Or both.
Beyoncé is facing a lot of criticism for using an ableist slur in her new co-written song Renaissance. She used ...
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 + ...
The hapless male Y chromosome finally has a purpose
I’ve never been fond of the human Y chromosome. Yes, the all-important SRY gene sets the early embryo on a path towards ...
DNA and gene editing are the real stars of the new Jurassic Park movie
In Jurassic World: Dominion, the science is mostly accurate, the bioethics message obvious, and the plot adheres to Isaac Asimov’s ...
When blood relatives hook up: Is ‘Genetic Sexual Attraction’ really a thing?
Academic sex researchers will ramp up investigation of genetic sexual attraction ...
Anosmia and COVID: Does loss of smell from coronavirus signal more serious neurological issues ahead?
The sudden inability to smell and taste that comes with COVID is startling and difficult to describe. I was lucky ...
Did you get a DNA ancestry kit for Father’s Day? Here are some things to consider before spitting in that vial
The media tales of familial surprises are the tip of an iceberg ...
Who is your real parent? Our Father on Netflix depicts the dark side of ‘secret serial sperm donation’. My birth has a similar origin but with a more hopeful twist
"Our Father" is difficult to watch, especially if you’ve suddenly discovered as an adult that you have a never-known family ...
I write about the history of genetics. Buffalo racially-motivated massacre refocuses attention on the dark side of the 100-year old eugenics movement
Whenever I work on a new edition of my human genetics textbook and reach the section on eugenics, which flourished ...
We have no idea what lies ahead with COVID
Recently on the local news, New York governor Kathy Hochul confidently proclaimed that we would not experience another COVID surge ...
Roma ‘gypsy’ people of Europe have long held a fascination for geneticists. Here’s why
The Roma people have long held a special fascination for population geneticists who study the frequencies of genetic diseases. The ...
Unveiling the genome of the ancient dingo — whose DNA is in every dog in the world
“Maybe a dingo ate your baby!” suggested Elaine Benis (Julia Louis Dreyfus) in an episode of Seinfeld in season 3, ...
Universal ‘pan coronavirus vaccine’? Scientists believe it’s possible within 2-3 years
Masks are coming off and we’re venturing back into the world, thanks largely to vaccines and natural immunity. Still, viral ...
‘Here, CRISPR critter’: How to gene edit a hypo-allergenic cat
I pity the 15 percent of the human population that cannot live with a cat, due to allergy. I’ve seen ...
New study probes reactions to discovering new relatives through consumer DNA testing
Late winter is the season for dealing with unexpected findings from DNA testing kits gifted in December. For most people, ...
What’s the likelihood of developing universal broad spectrum coronavirus vaccine?
Individual researchers from eclectic fields are finding new ways to prevent future pandemics. Artem Babaian, PhD, a computational biologist at ...
Sandy From the Mountains dies from COVID-19, leaving a message to the unvaxxed
Sandy and her husband lived in a cabin nestled into a mountainside in a small town in the Rockies, next ...
How Watson and Crick predicted the origin of Omicron and laid the groundwork for COVID-19 vaccines
The tantalizing final sentence to James Watson and Francis Crick’s landmark 1953 paper in Nature introducing the genetic material, DNA, ...
Two years after Wuhan: Why Omicron is a ‘blindsiding riptide’
Next Tuesday, December 21, marks two years since the China CDC Weekly acknowledged the first “cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown ...
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 ...
How snake venom and a smoking cessation drug inspired a nasal spray that blocks COVID
A simple nasal spray that stops SARS-CoV-2 in its tracks? That could block the coronavirus in the nose, before it ...
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 ...
