Category Archives: Genetics

Vitamin F

Posted on August 28, 2015 by kirkmike157

  Sabine is a mouse midwife. She’s looking after about 20 expectant mouse moms, and the prognosis for the babies is not good. 3/4 of them will be born looking relatively normal, and no one is too concerned about these. … Continue reading →

Posted in Drug Development, Genetics, Medicine, R&D, Science | Leave a comment

Lineage-Enders

Posted on April 21, 2015 by kirkmike157

Teddy Wayne recently wrote a piece for the Sunday New York Times called “The Childless Life” (the digital version is titled “No Kids for Me, Thanks”) which at face value was a discussion of the individual choice to go vocally, self-righteously extinct. In … Continue reading →

Posted in Environment, Genetics, Natural History, Science, Sperm donation | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Of Mice and Men, and Cats and Women

Posted on February 9, 2015 by kirkmike157

 Wookie Bear I am infested with parasites. My entire house is lousy with them—the word lousy is derived from the singular form for lice, a particular small mammalian ectoparasite. We categorize our parasites by where they live—the endoparasites like ascarid worms … Continue reading →

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Yeitse

Posted on January 22, 2015 by kirkmike157

This post was inspired by Michael Eisen (@mbeisen), who innocently asked about the DNA content of various foods on Twitter a few days ago. As expected, the responses were mostly the rantings of idiots, all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Michael … Continue reading →

Posted in Environment, Genetics, Science | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Patients in Waiting

Posted on November 22, 2013 by caydunbar

When people learn that I have been sequenced as part of George Church’s Personal Genome Project (PGP) they often say, “Wow- I’d like to be sequenced too!” My first response to them is, “Why – are you sick?” If the … Continue reading →

Posted in Genetics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Science is Not Your Enemy

Posted on September 18, 2013 by caydunbar

A labored defense of the practice of science – which we will define as scientism – was recently published under the title Science is Not Your Enemy by Stephen Pinker in New Republic magazine. A much more lighthearted approach by Tim Minchin … Continue reading →

Posted in CaBRI, Genetics, Science, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

700,000 year-old Thistle Creek horse eclipses Denisovan record

Posted on July 12, 2013 by hgcayman

Until last month, the most ancient whole genome ever sequenced from the DNA residues extracted from fossilized bone was from a polar bear.  Continuously frozen in ice for about 120,000 years on Svalbard Island, Norway, this polar bear jaw helped … Continue reading →

Posted in Genetics, Natural History | Tagged , , | 1 Comment