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.
‘Living, self-healing xenobots’ made from frog stem cells could lead to new drug delivery system
They’re perfect strangers: biological entities that, up until this point, had no business being together. And yet, [microbiologist Michael] Levin ...
Autism may share genetic links to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and other psychiatric disorders
Some of the inherited variants implicated in autism also increase the odds of other conditions, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression ...
Why infected patients should be put on multidrug cocktails to head off antibiotic tolerance and resistance
Infectious bacteria that are down but not quite dead yet may be more dangerous than previously thought. Even as one ...
Aging is ‘truly personal’: You could have the immune system of a teenager and the metabolism of a 50-year-old
One 50-year-old has the nimble metabolism of a teenager, while another’s is so creaky he developed type 2 diabetes — ...
Extinct human ancestor Homo erectus evolved in Africa—not Asia—new fossil study suggests
Homo erectus reached the Indonesian island of Java at some point between 1.3 million to 1.5 million years ago, according ...
‘Strange’ twist for viral version of Parkinson’s: It may take decades for disease symptoms to appear
In recent years, a mysterious surge of a Parkinson’s-like disorder spread around the world, causing an estimated 10-15% of the ten million worldwide ...
Gene therapy era: A look at current treatments and what’s next for cancers and genetic disorders
At least nine gene therapies have been approved for certain kinds of cancer, some viral infections and a few inherited ...
We have the power to wipe out mosquitoes and malaria—but is that a good idea?
Gene drives have yet to be tested outside the lab, and even the most developed project to date — the ...
How did early humans avoid being wiped out by tuberculosis?
Tuberculosis is responsible for as many as one billion deaths in the last 200 years alone, but its murderous history ...
Quest to understand sense of touch could lead to new treatments for chronic pain
If she wasn’t looking at her limbs, the girl didn’t seem to have any clue where they were. She lacked ...
Sex-linked mutations point to need for closer look at causes of autism in women, study suggests
Autism may stem from a different — and larger — set of genetic mutations in women than it does in ...
Psychedelics have ‘extraordinarily potent’ anti-inflammatory power. Is there a place for them in mainstream medicine?
Research on psychedelics, which have been profoundly stigmatized, highly restricted, and tragically undeveloped for more than half a century, is ...
Fetal tissue research restrictions disrupting studies into major diseases, including AIDS, Down syndrome, diabetes
A recent Trump administration decision to limit funding of research that uses fetal tissue is already disrupting research into major ...
Genetic mutation blamed for mysterious heart condition killing young members of Amish community
[D]octors at the Mayo Clinic say they’ve uncovered the cause of a mysterious heart condition that had suddenly killed over ...
Some patients in vegetative states have functioning minds. Keeping them alive may amount to ‘torture’
[Researchers] have convincingly demonstrated that a subset of individuals in persistent vegetative states have meaningfully functioning minds — even as ...
Terminally ill cancer patients donating their bodies for research on how tumors spread
It sounds macabre, but it’s important research. [Andrew] Rowan is one of a team of experts working on a new ...
Can we add ‘cooking’ to the list of things that drove human evolution?
Theories about the driving forces of evolutionary differentiation that separated us from our ape relatives are not lacking. Toolmaking, predisposition to ...
Age isn’t the thing that saps our memories: ‘Experiencing new things is the best way to keep the mind young’
Twenty-year-olds don’t think, “Oh dear, this must be early-onset Alzheimer’s.” They think, “I’ve got a lot on my plate right ...
Video: Building a bionic prosthetic leg that ‘thinks for itself’
It’s no question that researchers, doctors, and engineers want to design more effective robotic limbs that can help paralyzed and ...
Exposure to different types of dirt may boost body’s immune system, study suggests
Differences in allergy incidence between the two sides of the Finnish-Russian border might have something to do with exposure to ...
Past decade taught us how wrong we were about human evolution, including when our ancestors left Africa
In recent years, anthropologists around the world have discovered new human ancestors, figured out what happened to the Neanderthals, and pushed ...
Are we getting closer to understanding how our brains make memories?
How do memories work? That has been a burning question for over a century, since Richard Semon introduced the term ...
Gene therapy offers hope for untreatable CTE brain disorder
[Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College] published a new study (“Anti-Phospho-Tau Gene Therapy for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy”) in Human Gene Therapy that ...
‘We need it now’: Why precision medicine isn’t doing enough for children with cancer
Precision medicine, the concept of giving the right treatment to the right patient at the right time, is flourishing in ...
Collecting DNA samples from migrant detainees opens door to enhanced government surveillance
[T]he United States government will begin collecting DNA samples from thousands of people detained by immigration officials, including minors, and ...
Virus used to deliver gene therapy treatments may increase liver cancer risk, study suggests
Just as gene therapy finally seems to be living up to its promise, a study has revived a lingering worry ...
CBD fraud? Fate of controversial CBD industry could be decided by lawsuits alleging misleading marketing
Since the Food and Drug Administration can’t figure out whether supplements that contain cannabidiol, the marijuana-adjacent oil known as CBD, are ...
Podcast: Recovering memories through song: Could this be a ‘standard of care’ for dementia patients?
PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: The connection between music and memory was a life-changing experience for Nancy Gustafson, a retired opera singer ...
