Biomedicine & Disease
China GM revolution in low gear as anti-GMO activists spread ‘paranoia’ about infertility, safety
One of China’s major genetically modified food projects is now to all intents and purposes dead and buried. The expiry on ...
Liberal mag Nation on food fight: GMOs can provide sustainable food
In about 40 years, relentless dry spells may be more frequent across the Southwest, say climate scientists, and California may have ...
New genome analysis method detects genetic diseases more efficiently, scientists claim
A team of scientists has developed Phen-Gen, the first computer analysis software that cross-references a patient’s symptoms and a person’s genome ...
Reprogrammed cells create whole, fully functioning organ
Laboratory-grown replacement organs have moved a step closer with the completion of a new study. Scientists have grown a fully ...
Economics of genetic testing and medicine
The first time scientists sequenced a person’s entire genome, it took more than a decade and cost hundreds of millions ...
Should Down syndrome fetuses be terminated? Abortion, Richard Dawkins & morality
Richard Dawkins tweeted that abortion is the moral choice for a Down syndrome fetus. As usual, vilification ensued. But the ...
Where we are in the battle against Ebola
With hundreds of cases of Ebola in Africa, a panel of World Health Organization (WHO) experts has declared it is ...
Beyond autopsies: Using post-mortem brain scans to understand stroke, head injury and death
Besides their ability to lie completely still in MRI scanners, making them excellent patients, corpses have a lot of offer ...
Epigenetic changes may be responsible for Crohn’s disease
A new study finds a wide range of epigenetic changes -- alterations in DNA across the genome that may be ...
Who is Vandana Shiva and why is she saying such awful things about GMOs?
Vandana Shiva's status as a celebrity anti-GMO activist is not in question, but virtually everything else about her, from her ...
Efficacy of treatments and the rise of personalized medicine
Personalized medicine is the ability to tailor therapy to an individual patient so that, as it’s often put, the right ...
Lizard’s genes for regeneration might help humans regrow tissue
Scientists have unlocked the genetic mystery that allows a lizard to regrow its tail, bringing closer the possibility of treatments ...
Ten years in, first trial treatment from California’s stem cell initiative approved
It’s been ten years since California voters approved their state-funded stem cell initiative. Critics have charged that the initiative as ...
Female athlete teaches herself genetics, cracks her own rare disease
Kim Goodsell was running along a mountain trail when her left ankle began turning inward, unbidden. A few weeks later ...
Computational genetics identifies disease-causing mutations
With 3 billion letters in the human genome, it seems hard to believe that adding a DNA base here or removing ...
Is the power of the microbiome overhyped?
Explorations of how the microscopic communities that inhabit the human body might contribute to health or disease have moved from ...
I’m more afraid of my kids’ genomic data NOT being sequenced than how it might be misused
The era of precision genomics is upon us, and as with GMO foods, that scares some people. But not GLP ...
Anti-GMO ‘paranoia’ hindering China’s progress towards food security
One of China’s major genetically modified food projects is now to all intents and purposes dead and buried. The expiry on ...
Stem cell dysfunction may be responsible in some cases of schizophrenia
A gene long associated with schizophrenia and subsequently studied in rodent brain has now been scrutinized in human neurons. These neurons, derived ...
Human and dogs’ relationship based on dominance hierarchy
For dog lovers, comparative psychologists Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi have an unsettling conclusion. Many researchers think that as humans ...
Genome sequencing promising for curing lupus, personalized medicine
Medical researchers have used DNA sequencing to identify a gene variant responsible for causing lupus in a young patient. The ...
Interplay of genes, gender, and environment crucial to developing addiction
Studies of substance abusers have long hinted that some people are at least partially genetically predisposed to addiction. This certainly ...
Diet wars: ‘Caveman diet’ is all the rage, but ignores what our ancient ancestors really ate
Before the advances that made agriculture possible, humans ate solely what they could hunt and gather, which varied wildly depending ...
How much can we actually tell from a genome scan?
On August 6, researchers announced in The New England Journal of Medicine that they had found that mutations in a ...
23andMe moves to mend fences with FDA, seeks Bloom syndrome test approval
Seven months after the FDA forced 23andMe to stop reporting health results to its customers, the personal genomics company is ...
Alzheimer’s: Epigenetics and the APOE gene offer new reasons for hope
The genetics of Alzheimer's disease is complicated and still somewhat mysterious. But in the last week, researchers reported on two ...
Genetic empowerment: Extreme athlete probes own genetics to streamline diagnosis
When extreme athlete Kim Goodsell discovered that she had two extremely rare but ostensibly unrelated genetic diseases, she taught herself ...