Ricki Lewis

I was saddened to hear of Craig Venter's passing at the age of 79, today, April 30, 2026. Often portrayed as the bad guy, sometimes to Francis Collin's good guy, my handful of interactions with the man were positive and memorable. He was a genius, inventing technologies through a string of institutes and businesses that earned him the label of a "serial entrepreneur."

A True Genius

Dr. Venter is best known to the public as the "other" researcher "racing" to complete the first, in retrospect quite spotty, human genome sequence. The official announcement came on June 26, 2000, in the White House Rose garden (now desecrated with stone and yellow umbrellas), Venter and Francis Collins outwardly convivial after a sometimes bitter, headline-inspiring race.

To continue reading, go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.

My favorite part of the arrival of spring is getting back to the garden – especially tomatoes. But I've learned not to plant too soon, especially in my neck of the woods where snow can come as late as May.

Starting seedlings indoors is fine, but you can't cheat by buying a plant already festooned with fruits, which I unfortunately smugly did last year. One-by-one, the beautiful tomatoes turned red and quickly rotted from the bottom up into brown mush.

So I was intrigued by a study just published from professor Sota Koeda and graduate student Moeno Shimoide at the Graduate School of Agriculture at Kindai University in Japan, in the journal Euphytica. They tackled begomoviruses, a large group of pathogens known to decimate crops of beans, squash, cassava, cotton and tomatoes, causing tomato leaf curl disease. Whiteflies transmit it in the southern US as far north as North Carolina, and in the Caribbean, Mexico, Southeast Asia, Japan, and the Mediterranean.

Infected plants are stunted and festooned with upward curling, yellowing young small leaflets, and halted flowering.

To continue reading, go to DNA Science at PLoS, where this post first appeared.

It was inevitable that sci-fi would take on genetic enhancement, but I somehow missed Blake Crouch's brilliant 2022 dystopian novel Upgrade. He's one of my favorite authors, the brains behind Wayward Pines and five other novels, as well as 2024's Dark Matter on Apple TV+.

Because I'm working on the zillionth edition of my human genetics textbook, I'm ultra-sensitive to accuracy, and Upgrade doesn't disappoint. The tale's compelling view of what could be is far more detailed, and entertaining, than the gloom of GATTACA.

A Gene Drive with Unforeseen Consequences

I admit I've never thought much about genetic enhancement; my books and articles have always been about preventing or combating disease. But the invention of CRISPR gene editing in 2012, its ease and versatility, quickly changed what was possible.

To continue reading, go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.

Eman, our informally adopted son who is a physician in Monrovia, Liberia, is recovering from the measles. He contracted it from a teen patient.

"It started with a slight fever and chills, and became a burning fever. Then I had cough and red, watery eyes. I treated myself for malaria and went for a checkup. The doctor saw the rashes on my face and hands, and said it didn't look like a typical measles rash. Initially I was treated as an outpatient and told to isolate. Then in two days, I got shortness of breath at home, and had to get admitted. I experienced respiratory distress and had to get supplemental oxygen. It reminded me of having COVID."

He had measles vaccine as a child, and thought he had some cross-protection from having had chickenpox.

"I've been looking up papers on why a previously vaccinated person or an adult would get measles. A lot of them are pointing to incomplete dosages, improper handling of the vaccines, waning immunity, or being immunocompromised. There are many other previously vaccinated adults with measles for the first time. This should be happening in mostly immunocompromised people, and

I'm not. The measles outbreak has been terrible."

Perhaps the scariest thing about infectious diseases is that they change. That's what nucleic acids – DNA and RNA – do.

To continue reading, go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.

A Mediterranean diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, seeds, nuts, and especially olive oil, with a few heart-healthy cheese choices – mozzarella, ricotta, and especially feta – and some lean poultry and fish. It has long been associated with lower risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cognitive decline, but how it does so has been mostly a mystery. I've followed this way of eating for years – this post ends with an easy recipe for a vegetarian Moroccan stew.

A new report in Frontiers in Nutrition suggests the source of the benefits of the Mediterranean diet at the molecular level: two tiny proteins made in the mitochondria, the tiny, footprint-shaped organelles that house the biochemical reactions that extract energy from nutrient molecules.

To continue reading, go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.

Far more attention is paid to dog behavior than to cat behavior. So I was struck by a recent report in Plos One from a trio of researchers at the Wildlife Research Center of Kyoto University that probes the "association between androgen receptor gene and behavioral traits in cats (Felis catus)." "Through our research, we hope to deepen our understanding of cats and contribute to building happier relationships between cats and humans," said first author Yume Okamoto.

The paper is about purring and meowing, which I can attest are related and highly variable characteristics of cats.

Consider, for example, Archie Lewis. He commonly chatters and howls as he leaps about, ceasing only when a human, such as my daughter Carly, pays attention to him. Archie was in fact rehomed twice, before his current residence, because he wouldn't shut up. Archie is now training an adopted sister, Josephine, so Carly is carefully observing any teaching moments that might be transpiring.

Babycat may have been a "naturally occurring model of Alzheimer's disease," according to a new report in The European Journal of Neuroscience, from researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and California, the UK Dementia Research Institute, and Scottish Brain Sciences.

What I've long thought of as a curiosity amongst one of our 16 felines might actually have been dementia.

When Babycat began frantically and plaintively meowing at the corner of the ceiling in the bedroom closest to my head, we thought he was answering the scratches of rodents in the attic above, and searched. But mouse turds in an attic are a constant – what was provoking Babycat's distress? Our other six felines were undisturbed.

In retrospect, and after reading the neuroscience article, I think that Babycat had "feline cognitive dysfunction syndrome," aka feline dementia, an "age-related neurodegenerative disorder."

Cat parents and vets often don't recognize the condition, perhaps because of the overlaps with normal cat behavior. Cats can do strange things for awhile, and then stop doing them. But Babycat's behavior only worsened.

To continue reading go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.