Ricki Lewis

Today is both DNA Day and World Malaria Day. As I was pondering how to connect the topics, e-mail arrived from my “son,” a medical student in Liberia. He had malaria, again, and this time it had gone to his brain.

I “met” Emmanuel in 2007, when he e-mailed me after finding my contact info at the end of my human genetics textbook, which he was using in his senior year of high school. He is my personal link between DNA Day and World Malaria Day. But the dual commemoration also reminds me of the classic study that revealed, for the first time, how hidden genes can protect us – that carriers of sickle cell disease do not get severe malaria. Read More 

This month we celebrate the DNA anniversaries: unveiling of DNA’s structure in 1953, and the human genome sequence in 2003.

From now until DNA Day, April 25, bloggers will be worshipping the human genome. Nature will offer podcasts (“PastCasts”) and last week, Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, spoke to reporters, summarizing the “quantitative advances since the human genome project.”

It’s also the 20th anniversary of my non-science majors textbook, Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications. Writing the 10 editions has given me a panoramic view of the birth of genomics different from those of researchers, physicians, and journalists. Here are a few observations on the evolution of genetics to genomics, as I begin the next edition. Read More 

To help people with high blood glucose, I investigated the glycemic index for many vegetables, and invented something actually palatable, Low Glycemic Index Soup/Stew (LGIS). Be liberal with spices (I use Greek mix), and it's great. Tasty, easy, filling, cheap, easily made vegetarian, and it lowers blood sugar 2 hours post-prandial to about 110!

In crockpot:

celery (handful of small pieces)
1 big can of tomatoes, squished, or fresh
a few baby carrots cut up (limit these)
1 small zucchini cut into small cubes
1 whole zucchini, smashed after it softens
1 very small cut up onion
handful of fresh green beans, cut into pieces
1 cup broccoli + cauliflower pieces (from frozen mix)
lots of small pieces of bok choy
½ can chick peas (or whole can for stew) (lentils ok too)
1 pound beef in small cubes
veggie broth
beef broth
parsley (a bit)
spinach (handful or more)
cabbage OK but it gets a little smelly

DO NOT USE
Root vegetables – no parsnips, turnips, leeks, potatoes
More than 1 onion
More than 4 baby carrots
Beans (other than green and chickpeas)
Peas

FOR VEGETARIANS just leave out the beef! Read More 

The spleen is a very unappreciated body part. The Talmud considered it the “organ of laughter,” whereas the ancient Greeks equated it with melancholy. Today it’s sometimes used to mean anger.

When a spleen bursts, spewing all manner of blood cells, we take it out – as happened to Katniss Everdeen in the third installment of The Hunger Games and to Jack Ryan’s daughter in Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games. But starting life without a spleen is a whole different story. It’s deadly.

“The spleen is not the brain. No one thinks it’s very important,” says Alexandre Bolze, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Rockefeller University. His discovery of what causes a person to lack a spleen, reported April 11 in Science Express, has implications far beyond a ridiculed body part. Read More 

I’m uneasy counseling a patient for mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 cancer susceptibility genes. Typically, she’ll have a “first degree relative” – usually a mother or sister – with a related cancer, or might even have a test result in hand. This happened a week ago.

FUZZY GENETIC INFORMATION
My patient comes from a long line of female relatives who’d died young from breast or ovarian cancer. She’s already been tested and knows she has a BRCA1 mutation. Will she get the family’s cancer? Knowing would enable her to decide whether and when to undergo surgery to remove her breasts, ovaries, and uterus. Read More