Biomedicine & Disease
Glowing Plant researchers respond to Kickstarter ban
Glowing Plant project co-founder discusses Kickstarter's decision to ban GMOs ...
GM rice delivers antibodies against deadly rotavirus
A strain of rice genetically engineered to protect against diarrhoeal disease could offer a cost-effective way to protect children in ...
Plant geneticist Kevin Folta explains GMO process in foods
When humans began to farm between ten and twenty thousand years ago, they took the seeds from their best edible ...
Why do microbes kill some people but not others?
Why do some horrible infectious diseases kill an unlucky few and ignore millions of others? Perhaps the most infamous example ...
Non-Jews hit by ‘Jewish’ diseases fall through the cracks of genetic screening
Today, the vast majority of babies born with Tay-Sachs disease are not Jewish. Why aren't non-jews getting prenatal screening? ...
Scientists reverse engineer a bacterium by sequencing diseased human tissue
Normally, bacteria are identified after investigators obtain a living sample and grow it in laboratory dishes. But in the case ...
Would you post your DNA on Facebook?
The case of Henrietta Lacks provides a cautionary tale for those who willingly give up their DNA for genealogy tests, lawyers ...
Elle’s botched response to previously botched anti-GMO story
Elle has had an opportunity to redress its botched GMO coverage by opening its pages to a genuine discussion of ...
Study tells the story of caste segregation and genetic diesase in India
Scientist provide evidence that modern-day India is the result of recent population mixture among divergent demographic groups. The findings describe how India ...
Twin studies suggest connection between genetics and spirtuality
I am frequently asked by journalists to recall the most surprising finding of our twin studies. The study of religion ...
Argentine scientists develop virus resistant GM potato
Argentine scientists have developed potato plants resistant to Potato Virus Y (PVY), a disease that reduces crop yields from 20 ...
Ethical dilemma surrounds genetic tinkering with bird flu
Researchers have outlined plans to genetically experiment with the H9N7 bird flu to test how it might develop human-to-human transmission ...
Race matters for stem cell transplants
If you become ill with a blood cancer or other disease that requires a stem cell transplant, here’s an uncomfortable ...
Overcoming the “ick” factor key to understanding GMOs
One of the greatest obstacles to technological progress, especially but not only in areas such as food and medicine, has ...
Genomic sequencing identifies carcinogen in herbal remedy
Genomic sequencing experts at Johns Hopkins partnered with pharmacologists at Stony Brook University to reveal a striking mutational signature of ...
How gene therapy helped one bubble boy
Two-year-old Jameson Golliday was born with X-SCID, or "bubble boy disease," which means he has no immune system. At birth he had ...
One gene variant contributes to two mental disorders
Schizophrenia and fragile X syndrome both can involve problems with cognitive function, and two studies published in Nature Neuroscience earlier on August 4 ...
Hawaii’s paradise is being threatened by fear-mongering, threats, and witch-hunting
Is Hawaii, Paradise being Poisoned? AbsoFreakinlutely by fear, threats, fear mongering a witch hunt conducted by those who don’t trust ...
Genetic mutations work differently in different individuals
Scientists have known for a while that genetic mutations can modify each other's effects and that subtle differences in the ...
Cataloguing Earth’s genetics, to cure disease and reverse extinction
Researchers at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History are helping to tackle Earth's remaining 1.3 million species through a project known ...
Nigeria: Biotechnology is a key platform for sustainable economic growth
Since the advent of biotechnology, the number of countries that cultivate genetically engineered (GE) crops continues to increase globally. While ...
Foodie Michael Pollan roundly criticized for baseless “industry talking points” tweet
Michael Pollan of the University of California-Berkeley School of Journalism has had quite a week – and not in a good way ...
Would you edit your genes?
The most difficult thinking about gene therapy involves normally healthy people who have mutations that are highly predictive of a ...
Tanzania: Formerly anti-GMO journalist Mark Lynas speaks out in favor of crop biotech
“In my view the controversy over GMOs represents one of the greatest science communications failures of the past half-century,” [Lynas] ...
Personalized medicine gives rise to new ethical questions
We stand at a great crossroads. We have begun to treat cancers arising from disparate organs in like ways as ...
Why does Myriad think it can win BRCA gene lawsuits?
Earlier this month, Myriad Genetics filed patent infringement lawsuits against Ambry Genetics (on July 9th) and Gene-by-Gene (on July 10th) ...
Mammoth cloning: Big animal, big ethical concerns
Theoretically, mammoths could be cloned by recovering, reconstructing or synthesizing viable mammoth DNA but some object to “deep” human intervention ...
