Ricki Lewis

COVID and monkeypox seem to have come out of nowhere and exploded across continents. But the phenomenon of natural selection acting on genetic variants – of viruses or organisms – that have an advantage in a certain place and time is ages old. The rabbits of Australia provide a powerful example of natural selection run amok, favoring a particularly robust mix of domestic and wild traits against an environmental backdrop of plenty of food and a paucity of predators.

The animals that have overrun the continent eat almost any plant, their appetites reverberating along food webs, costing an estimated $200 million a year. Over decades, interventions to control their numbers – from rabbit-proof fences to intentional infections with nasty viruses to shooting – have all failed. "In Australia, the rabbit has survived drought, fire, flood, diseases, predators, poisons and other stratagems devised by man and remains this country's most serious vertebrate pest," wrote Brian Coman in "Tooth and Nail: The Story of the Rabbit in Australia."

Now researchers from the University of Cambridge and CIBIO Institute in Portugal have wed genetics to history to illuminate the precise source of Australia's problem. Their report is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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

Beyoncé is facing a lot of criticism for using an ableist slur in her new co-written song Renaissance. She used the word "spaz" twice in a derogatory reference to a neurological disorder in Heated, which dropped in late July.

Just a few weeks before, while promoting her new song GRRLS, Lizzo used the same slur. The tweet went viral, prompting a sharp rebuke by Hannah Diviney, who has cerebral palsy. Her tweet also viral, landed on the front page of the BBC, New York Times and the Washington Post. 

Lizzo took notice and changed the lyrics. "I never want to promote derogatory language," she wrote.

I've lapsed too in word choices, but I'm not a pop star – I write college life science textbooks. I'm currently revising the 14th edition of my human genetics textbook. I've written or co-written four textbooks, totaling 38 editions: intro biology, human anatomy and physiology, and human genetics. Other authors have taken over all but human genetics: I update it every three years. 

To continue reading go to Genetic Literacy Project, where this post first appeared. 

When monkeypox came from out of nowhere in the spring, it sounded like a joke to our collective COVID-fatigued brains. I think we've all got CDC fatigue too. When revised recommendations recently told us it was okay to do or not do what we've been doing or not doing for months, I don't think many people paid attention. I'm glad the agency is finally re-evaluating things.

What may not be as well known is that CDC publishes an excellent, open-access, international, peer-reviewed monthly journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. Since 1995, EID has provided a window into future health concerns, for us and other animals, with historical and cultural background as well as current epidemiology, covering all sorts of things.

Underlying the research reports on eclectic infectious diseases in the journal are a set of shared and converging factors:
• global climate change shifting habitats
• metagenomics technology comparing genome sequences in environmental samples
• perhaps we're looking harder
• a much more epidemiologically literate public than pre-pandemic

So I thought I'd investigate the August 2022 issue of EID. The focus is zoonoses – diseases that jump from non-human animals to us.

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

Transplant medicine could take a giant leap forward if donor organs could soak up oxygen for longer and decay delayed. A technology called OrganEx, described in Nature from a team at Yale, promises to do just that. The researchers stopped the hearts of pigs and an hour later used OrganEx, then cataloged the return of bodily functions. The new approach far exceeded the ability of existing technology to prolong organ viability.

Popular Pigs

Pigs have long been a popular animal model of human disease because they are about our size and their hearts and blood vessels are quite similar. They have also had fictional roles in medicine.

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

The last thing the field of gene therapy needs is another setback. Two studies, not yet peer-reviewed, point to adeno-associated virus (AAV) as a suspect behind the unusual hepatitis that emerged in children in April 2022.

AAV has been critical to the development of gene therapy, as carriers of human genes in the single strand of DNA that is the viral genome.

AAV has been considered relatively harmless, as viruses go. It was discovered in 1965 as a tiny tag-along that will only replicate in human cells if adenovirus is also there at some point – hence the "adeno-associated." AAV infection can also accompany certain herpes infections. Several subtypes of AAV have since been identified; AAV2 and AAV9 are gene therapy favorites. And they're common. Eighty percent of us harbor AAV2.

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

Zeke, shown here retrieving a stick from the surf at Lambert's Cove, Martha's Vineyard, is an aussiedoodle – a cross between an Australian shepherd and a poodle. I did an informal survey there over the course of a week, and estimated that approximately 70 percent of the dogs on the beach harbored poodle genes.

Diverse doodles share the trademark tight curly fur, but vary in size, color, head shape, and behavioral and other traits. Several websites list 50+ variations on the poodle hybrid theme, including the bassetoodle, bernedoodle, chipoo, doxiepoo, Irish doodle, poochon, rottle, and shihpoo.

Why poodles? The breed evokes such effusive descriptions as "confident yet affectionate, but also active and deceivingly athletic. What's not to like about the dignified and elegant Poodle?" The mixes are deemed highly intelligent, although I can't imagine any of my cats chasing a stick, let alone retrieving it.

Perhaps I was witnessing a biased sampling, and the doodles simply have a combination of gene variants that somehow makes them love running in the sand. I watched, transfixed, as a goldendoodle followed a seabird far out into the surf, upsetting the human observers and revealing a superior avian intelligence.

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

I've never been fond of the human Y chromosome. Yes, the all-important SRY gene sets the early embryo on a path towards maleness, but the rest? Mostly DNA borrowed from a long-ago X, peppered with eight long palindromes.

"The Y is a pathetic little chromosome with lots of junk. It is gene-poor, prone to deletion, and useless. You can lack a Y and not be dead, just female," Jennifer Marshall Graves told me years ago when I defiled the Y in The Scientist. She's professor emeritus of Australian National University, an evolutionary geneticist who works on kangaroos, platypus, Tasmanian devils, and various dragon lizards.

But men missing the Y in some of their white blood cells face heightened health risks. That was a mere association a few years ago, but now appears to be causal, according to results of an investigation in Science from researchers at Uppsala University. The research combines clues from mouse studies and epidemiological data from the UK Biobank.

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

The Supreme Court justices who dismantled Roe v Wade in Dobbs v Jackson Woman's Health Organization should have taken a refresher course in Bio 101. Their decision is devoid of anything even hinting at modern medical science.

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology today released a joint statement from more than 75 health care organizations "in opposition to legislative interference" with women's health care. They conclude:

"Abortion care is safe and essential reproductive health care. Keeping the patient–clinician relationship safe and private is essential not only to quality individualized care but also to the fabric of our communities and the integrity of our health care infrastructure. As leading medical and health care organizations dedicated to patient care and public health, we condemn this and all interference in the patient–clinician relationship."

I couldn't agree more.

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

If a new Planet of the Apes or Jurassic Park film comes out, I'm going to go see it. The latest, Jurassic World:Dominion, didn't disappoint.

A Plague of Locusts

The science is mostly accurate, the bioethics message obvious, and the plot adheres to Isaac Asimov's "change one thing" rule for science fiction. In the world of Jurassic Park, that lone variable is time. We just have to accept that a "titanosaur" like Argentinosaurus somehow grew and developed from a lab-nurtured baby to a 130-foot-tall and 110-ton adult in a few years.

The official summary from IMDb for the new film is vague and continues the impossibly-rapid-growth theme:

Four years after the destruction of Isla Nublar, dinosaurs now live–and hunt–alongside humans all over the world. This fragile balance will reshape the future and determine, once and for all, whether human beings are to remain the apex predators on a planet they now share with history's most fearsome creatures in a new Era.

Four years? Animals radiating around the world? Even rats or rabbits couldn't do that. And the film is actually more about insects.

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

"Our Father" is difficult to watch, especially if you've suddenly discovered as an adult that you have a never-known family of half-siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews thanks to a long-ago sperm donation. One review dubs the series "Netflix's most gruesome real-life documentary yet." 

It tells the tale of Indianapolis fertility physician Donald Cline, who used his sperm to inseminate at least 96 women (and counting) between 1979-1986. After years of being in the dark, the offspring have found each other thanks to diligent sleuthing by some of the half-siblings and DNA testing. 

"The majority of us live in a 25-mile radius, some within minutes of Cline. I walk around and I could be related to anyone. I've probably met half sibs and we don't even know it," said a son named Guy.

To continue reading, go to Genetic Literacy Project, where this post first appeared.