Daily Human Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of human genetics issues, including gene editing, regulations and bioethics, gene therapy, epigenetics, personal genomics, evolution, ancestry and artificial intelligence. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
Viewpoint: What should we do when Artificial Intelligence crosses ethical lines?
A few years ago, a number of A.I.-research organizations began to develop systems for addressing ethical impact, [including] the Association ...
20 years after the Human Genome Project: Efforts are underway to capture human genetic diversity and catalog missing DNA
The Human Genome Project — which built the blueprint, called the human reference genome — has changed the way medical ...
Obesity contributor? Fructose — a commonly used sweetener — disrupts our immune system, study shows
Fructose is a type of simple sugar that makes up 50% of table sugar. It is found in sugary drinks ...
What’s in the biomedical pipeline for CRISPR gene editing?
One great attraction of Crispr, says Niren Murthy, a bioengineer at Berkeley, is that it could be a one-shot affair ...
‘Friendship, family and culture’: Surprising evolution-based attributes that dolphins share with humans
Scientists like Dr Blake Morton, a Lecturer of Psychology from the University of Hull, suggest that [personality similarities across species] ...
The Human Genome Project and the field of genetics have a diversity problem
The Human Genome Project was an international, collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all ...
Cancer dates back millions of years. Now we are cracking its evolutionary code
Cancer cells are on a continual evolutionary journey of mutation and proliferation, creating a genetically diverse population with a range ...
What CRISPR can do for the world
What might CRISPR do to the diversity of our species? If we are no longer subject to a natural lottery ...
Why did humans survive while our Denisovan and Neanderthal cousins died out? Just one gene could have made all the difference
Stem cells, the self-renewing precursors of other cell types, can be used to build brain organoids [or] "mini brains" in ...
Evolution of literacy: How Protestantism and the Bible rewired Medieval brains
Of course, writing systems are thousands of years old, found in ancient Sumer, China, and Egypt, but in most literate ...
Do you thrive in cold weather? 20% of people have a genetic mutation that keeps skeletal muscles warmer
Skeletal muscle comprises fast-twitch (white) fibers that fatigue quickly and slow-twitch (red) fibers that are more resistant to fatigue. The ...
Sickle cell gene therapy trial halted after two patients develop cancer, though the link is not certain
A patient who was treated [with gene therapy for sickle cell disease] five and a half years ago has developed ...
Infographic: History’s 11 deadliest plagues, from the Antonine epidemic in ancient Rome to COVID-19
The novel coronavirus took just a few months to sweep the globe. More than 2.5 million people around the world ...
Organs on a chip? Device tracks Parkinson’s disease by modeling how the gut microbiome interacts with the brain, liver, and colon
[B]acteria living in our gut can influence some neurological diseases. To help researchers better understand how this gut-brain axis communicates, ...
Navigating advertising landmines on the path to egg freezing
More women in the UK than ever before are considering freezing their eggs, with the sharp rise in inquiries at ...
A complicated legacy: Reassessing Darwin‘s views on race and gender 150 years after the ‘The Descent of Man’
Darwin was a liberal, and an abolitionist, perhaps influenced by his taxidermy tutor in Edinburgh, a Guyanese man called John ...
‘Dark angels of evolution, terrific and terrible’: How viruses have shaped evolution, for better or for worse
[Many] viruses bring adaptive benefits, not harms, to life on Earth, including ours. We couldn’t continue without them. We wouldn’t ...
20 year anniversary of the mapping of the human genome: What does the future hold?
The coalescence of bioinformatics and computational biology around algorithms has... given rise to new institutional forms and new markets for ...
Taking Vitamin C or zinc to fight a cold or COVID? New study shows they have no effect
Over the years, scientific studies have not conclusively shown that [zinc or vitamin C] can help overcome illnesses such as ...
How animals perceive time
[Are animals] entirely free from the temporal plane? Do they perceive it in any way? Do some species perceive it ...
How structural racism undermines independent science research and hurts racial and ethnic minorities
It is critical to acknowledge the societal structures - the groundwater, as it is called in "The Groundwater Approach: Building ...
RNA hacking: How the miraculous tools of the genetics revolution will transform healthcare and the world
[mRNA COVID] vaccines, in essence, transform our bodies into personalized manufacturing plants producing an otherwise foreign object to trigger our ...
One a day keeps the doctor away? Eating apples appears to boost brain function
Given that apples are one of the most widely consumed fruits in the world, [researchers Tara Louise] Walker, [Gerd] Kempermann ...
Viewpoint: Why assisted reproduction needs to be more comprehensively regulated
The United States fertility market is growing very rapidly, and is projected to reach $15.4 billion in 2023, more than ...
Viewpoint: ‘Genetic reductionism’ — Why CRISPR is not the answer to every problem
Referring to DNA as the code of life, a rigid blueprint for who we are, implies that we are the ...
‘GUYnecology’ and ‘Phallacy’: Two new books take on the ups and downs of male appendages
It can stretch up to nine times your body length (if you’re a barnacle); be a detachable tentacle covered in ...
Video: The saga of how humans developed the ability to talk
The evolution of our ability to speak is its own epic saga and it’s worth pausing to appreciate that. It’s ...
Cancer detection in minutes? New device measures biomarker exosomes on a chip
Leyla Esfandiari Ph.D., is an assistant professor [at the University of Cincinnati’s] College of Engineering and Applied Science. She has ...
