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Stories by Ricki Lewis

Health

Like a Game of Clue, Genomics Tracks Outbreak, Revealing Evolution in Action

Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with a lead pipe? Or Mrs. Peacock in the ballroom with a candlestick? No, it was deadly, drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae from a 43-year-old woman spreading to 17 other patients, killing 6 of them and sickening 5 others, at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Clinical Center in June 2011.In a biotech version of the classic board game "Clue," researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) used genome sequencing to solve the medical mystery of how the infection spread...

August 22, 2012 — Ricki Lewis
Evolution

10 Things Exome Sequencing Can t Do-but Why It s Still Powerful

Sequencing of the exome – the protein-encoding parts of all the genes – is beginning to dominate the genetics journals as well as headlines, thanks to its ability to diagnose the formerly undiagnosable.The 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting honored the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel’s coverage of a 4-year-old whose intestinal disorder was finally diagnosed after sequencing his exome...

May 16, 2012 — Ricki Lewis
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