About Me: The basics.
I’m a metazoan, composed of around a trillion individual cells (I’m not sure exactly since I never counted them all), but I find it’s much simpler to get on with life if I think of myself as an individual – an obviously flawed notion since it’s off by a trillion to one. Having said that, I wasn’t always a trillion cells, but was once just a single cell, that divided many times to become what I am today. I know, a pretty incredible story, right? That’s the power of exponential growth for you.
I share a good bit of my genome with everything from trees, bacteria, slime molds, and flatworms, but if you’re able to read this then I share almost all my genome with you. From the point of view of genetics, we’re practically clones. Many of my direct ancestors were fish, some were invertebrates, and many many were single celled bacteria – I’m not trying to brag or anything. I contain more junk DNA (including pseudogenes, transposons, dead virus, etc) than really very helpful DNA, but I try not to let that get me down. My helpful DNA really is pretty helpful, afterall.
I enjoy looking at the stars while lying on the earth, which is much safer to do than looking at the earth while lying on the stars. Even so, I’m told that my time on planet earth is expected to be brief by geological standards, so I spend my short time learning about this universe through the methods of science, so I can fully appreciate how beautiful it all is.
About Me: more specific!
Hi, my name is Rich Feldenberg and I’m the creator of the Darwin’s Kidneys blog. I’m a pediatric nephrologist at an academic pediatric teaching hospital. I have a passion for understanding the world through science, and my blog is to help me reach out to the world to teach, educate, and inspire curisosity in science.
I have a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and an M.D from the University of Missouri.
I am board certified in Pediatrics and Pediatric Nephrology and board eligible in Internal Medicine.
I’ve done some molecular biology research as a Nephrology fellow at Yale University, and currently I’m working on an on-line Master’s degree in bioinformatics.
I’m an aspiring science writer and currently working on my first book.
I am married with two great kids and two crazy puppies. I am a committed bike commuter and avid runner.
You can follow me on twitter at Rich Feldenberg
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