I have two children under the age of five, and both are very active lil’ bees! And that’s a good thing, because an active early life helps promote health in the long term. But honestly, sometimes, I wish they would preserve their calories more!
You see, my children are born with allergies to dairy, eggs, nuts and seafood. Yeah, all the “good stuff” of calorie-bearing food. No mac-n-cheese, no ice cream or cake or pastry, no peanut butter. I breastfed both of them, which was a savior in the first year (but a pain for me to abstain from food that …read more

Ashkenazi Jews are known to have an average IQ between 107-115, putting half of the ethnic group into the genius range.
Unfortunately, Ashkenazi Jews are also plague with genetic diseases! One fourth of the population is a carrier of one of several genetic conditions, which include Tay-Sachs Disease, Canavan, Niemann-Pick, Gaucher, Familial Dysautonomia, Bloom Syndrome, Fanconi anemia, Cystic Fibrosis and Mucolipidosis IV.
A “carrier” for a gene means that the person carries only one copy of the gene. The gene is not expressed in that person’s trait or phenotype. However, marrying another carrier or someone with two copies of …read more

The day after Thanksgiving is the most important holiday before Christmas. It’s our signal to start shopping for holiday gifts!
But what do you give someone who is crazy about genetics?
Well, my friend, you came to the right store, if you need a gift for any of the following reasons:

The holidays! What better way to say Merry XX-Mas! (or Merry XY-Mas!)
Birthdays and anniversaries, graduate fellowships, employment, promotions, new discoveries, grant approval, postdoctoral work and all the major accomplishments in life!
Something for your boss; your boss’ boss; your professor; your department head and all the important people …read more

My sister’s in town visiting and we spent a great day in one of the main shopping areas of Central London on Regent and Oxford Streets. Although I’m sure you can find practically anything there, I didn’t see any DNA t-shirts let alone this one from DNA Worldwide that is personalized with your DNA fingerprint .
As far as I can tell, you send in a cheek swab and they’ll extract the DNA, use restriction enzymes to chop it up into pieces, and run it through gel elecrophoresis to obtain a pattern, then take a picture and stick it on your …read more

Notice any similaries between the two books pictured above? On the left is Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince due out tomorrow. On the right is Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

Both have an apple pictured prominently on the cover and Survival of the Sickest even has the same apple green as the apple shown on the cover of Freakonomics.
Both are published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins (why is that one word?).
Both are written by an expert coupled with a professional writer. Dr. Sharon Moalem has a PhD in …read more

Instead of telling you about the new dawn of personalized medicine with the start of genetic testing for warfarin metabolism, I’d rather tell you about LibraryThing, a way for you to catalog your books online. I’m only just starting to enter my books into my personal library, but had fun looking at the which of the over 9 million books on members’ bookshelves have been tagged with genetics or DNA.
Some of the most popular books tagged “genetics” in LibraryThing are:

Genome by Matt Ridley

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes

The Double Helix by James D. …read more

Science is more than just the here-and-now. The personal stories and daily struggles behind major discoveries and throughout the history of science are just as fascinating and important. Scientists Anonymous: Great Stories of Women in Science by Patricia Fara for children age 12 and over captures the stories of some women scientists, including Rosalind Franklin. And while I’ve not made any major discoveries in genetics, I have contributed some to scientific knowledge. Now at the end of the year, I’d like to show you that there truly is a scientist behind Genetics and Health. Here’s the story of my …read more

The New York Times features DNA 11 today, which was included in the Genetics and Health list of DNA gifts.

The DNA portraits work like this: At the DNA 11 site, you pick from several sizes and color schemes — perhaps to match the version of you expressed by your home décor — and pony up $390 to $790, depending on your choices. You get a kit in the mail, swab the inside of your mouth and smear that on a special card that you send back to the company. A DNA snapshot is extracted from your saliva and run through …read more

Apparently, my support of Michael Crichton’s Next in the face of ridicule was not enough to grant me an audience with the author. (Just joking!) But we can still enjoy Bryan Appleyard’s interview with him in the Sunday Times (UK).

The satire of Next is focused not on a single delusion, but on what Crichton sees as the outrageous state of the law and the science of genetics. “I was just astonished at the state of knowledge and how it was being interpreted in the courts, which clearly seemed to require revision.”

Happily, I am not alone in liking Crichton’s Next. Bryan …read more

Oops. In my book review, I forgot to quote my favorite bit of Michael Crichton’s book, Next.
Op-Ed Commentary from the New York Times:
A “SOCIABILITY GENE”? WHEN WILL THIS NONSENSE STOP?
Columbia University researchers now claim to have found a sociability gene. What’s next? The shyness gene? The reclusive gene? The monastic gene? How about the get-off-my-back gene?
In truth, researchers are taking advantage of the public’s lack of knowledge about how genes actually operate. No single gene controls any behavioral trait. Unfortunately, the public doesn’t know that. They think there’s a gene for eye color, for height, and for hair curliness, so …read more