June 19, 2012
June 19th is World Sickle Cell Awareness Day and commemorates the date in 2008 when the United Nations began recognizing this group of genetic blood disorders as a public health concern. Sickle cell disease affects millions around the globe and nearly 100,000 people in the United States. It’s relatively [...]
February 14, 2012
Sickle Cell Celebrities A number of famous individuals have suffered from sickle cell anemia including Miles Davis, perhaps the most famous jazz musician to have lived (some consider his platinum-selling album Kind of Blue to be THE jazz album), and Tionne 'T-Boz' Watkins, a singer and founder of the [...]
March 31, 2010
Each year at least 350 million people around the world are infected by malaria parasites. More than one million people, mainly young children, succumb to the disease. But these numbers would be even higher if it weren’t for genetic adaptations that have evolved in populations living in areas where [...]
August 6, 2009
Not long after Karl Landsteiner first described the different ABO blood types, scientists started looking for associations between blood type and other human traits. Some of their theories were truly weird (more on these tomorrow!), but some have held up to scientific scrutiny. Venous Thromboembolism [...]
June 24, 2009
Malaria, a strong evolutionary pressure in humans, has also shaped the baboon genome, new research says. Each year at least 350 million people around the world are infected by malaria parasites. More than one million people, mainly young children, succumb to the disease. But these numbers would be even [...]
May 26, 2009
Malaria is one of the leading causes of death in the developing world, claiming nearly a million victims each year. The great majority of them are African children below the age of five. The illness is caused by a single-celled parasite called Plasmodium that is transmitted by mosquito bites to humans. In a [...]
July 22, 2008
Last week in the Spittoon we reported on a new study that identified an interesting genetic trade-off — a genetic variant known that has one effect on a person's vulnerability to malaria, and the opposite on susceptibility to HIV infection. The "Duffy negative" version of the gene, which is common among [...]
July 1, 2008
Last month I had the opportunity to go to the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution conference in the striking city of Barcelona. This is the premiere conference for geneticists studying evolution in everything from bacteria to fruit flies, weeds, worms and our favorite model organism, humans! This is a [...]
