Articles by Randall C Willis

Many discoveries and new fields come and go (when it comes to noteworthiness and newsworthiness) in the life sciences, but perhaps the microbiome will be something of a different nature, both in terms of notoriety, complexity and impact for many years to come

Heart scientists look to small RNAs for clues to pathology and treatment

A Hollywood screenwriter, a marine biologist and a science journalist walk into a lecture hall...and suggest you should tell more stories

Non-mammalian models help personalize drug discovery

We want to believe that science is rational and predictable but more often than not, this is only true in hindsight, once we finally “understand” what we are looking at, having viewed it from multiple angles and tested it under a variety of conditions. And even then, the seemingly chaotic nature of science surprises us, and not always in a good way.

Are expanding applications pushing next-gen sequencing beyond its limits?

There seems to be an assumption that if something is statistically significant, it is medically relevant. The corollary would imply that something determined not statistically significant is therefore not medically relevant. But is this true? And medically relevant for whom?

Is our arsenal evolving quickly enough to match its protean foe?

Cell therapy meets gene therapy to advance dermatology

In the vein of 'garbage in, garbage out' from the computer programming world, perhaps we also need to think in terms of 'jargon in, gibberish out' a bit more often with scientific discussions

Metabolomics shifts from map-making to therapeutic strategizing

Regardless of whether it's passive neglect or active erasure, we need to stop leaving out non-Caucasian populations when it comes to cancer research, genome studies and treatment