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.
Immunotherapy represents an entirely new strategy for cancer treatments
Most cancers, once they spread, are incurable. Cancer researchers are desperate to raise the number of patients who go into ...
Personal genetics consumers risk uncovering uncertain paternity
Personal genomics products continue to have unintended consequences that end either in joyous occasion, but often times also come with ...
World Health Organization accelerates program to test Ebola drugs
Science to the rescue in West Africa? The World Health Organization is launching a crash programme to test experimental treatments ...
Bat brains help tell us how processing works in our own
When you’re driving a car, you pass by people, places, colors and shapes. Suddenly, you see one particular combination of ...
Who owns your DNA? It’s not who you think
Recent court cases show the law favors hospitals and law enforcement rather than individuals when it comes to handing genomic ...
Ricin, botulism toxin and plague found in latest NIH deep clean
The National Institutes of Health said it has uncovered a nearly century-old container of ricin and a handful of other ...
Common childhood kidney cancer sequenced, offering treatment target
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center and the Gill Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children's Medical Center, Dallas, ...
‘DNA evidence’ uncovers Jack the Ripper’s identity? Maybe not
According to a WORLD EXCLUSIVE at The Daily Mail, the mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has been solved by ...
Find your genetic soulmate for the low, low price of…
Over the centuries, physics, chemistry, and biology have transformed what once was seen as mysterious or even magical—the rotation of ...
First cancer drug that turn off body’s immune system proteins approved
U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the first drug in a new class of cancer medicines that work by stimulating the ...
Genetic factors make women more susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease than men
Years ago, many scientists assumed that a woman’s heart worked pretty much the same as a man’s. But as more ...
Venture capital firms pushing into synbio funding
Synthetic biology, which uses engineered gene sequences to create new biological systems and devices, used to be a subject for ...
European brain initiative mired in too much IT
Launched in October 2013, the Human Brain Project (HBP) was sold by charismatic neurobiologist Henry Markram as a bold new ...
Evolution created obesity epidemic? Theory of calorie-hoarding genes challenged
The obesity crisis has given prehistoric dining a stardom not known since Fred Flintstone introduced the Bronto Burger. Last year, ...
World woefully under supporting Ebola response
World, you still just don't get it. The Ebola epidemic that is raging across West Africa, killing more than half ...
How the Ebola virus has spread
If you’ve been following the fast moving Ebola outbreak in West Africa, you may wonder why containing the deadly virus ...
23andMe focuses on data portal for researchers
In less than a decade, biotech company 23andMe has turned a refrigerator full of spit into one of the largest ...
Genghis Khan and the role of power, wealth and behavior in human genetic ancestry
Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan marked 16 million males as his progeny after he conquered Eurasia with his sons and brothers ...
Genetic short cuts: Horizontal gene transfer
Some plants rely on specialized bacterial backup to help them synthesize nutrients. Instead of evolving these traits over and over ...
Is “reductionism” in behavioral genetics a boon or curse?
Reductionism haunts modern genetics, but how has this approach — akin to taking apart a watch to see how it ...
DNA-based stool test now available for colon cancers
Exact Sciences Corp. recently announced that Mayo Clinic will be the first health system to offer Cologuard®, the first and ...
UK Parliament begins discussion of “3-parent IVF”
The British government continues to move toward legalizing a form of inheritable genetic modification that would combine eggs or embryos ...
Russia’s Putin interested in cloning mammoth
Upon meeting a 28,000-year-old mammoth mummy in a museum in the Russian Far East, Russian President Vladimir Putin wondered if ...
Man Scalia mocked as murderer deserving of death penalty now exonerated by DNA
A North Carolina death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence on Tuesday was once held up by Supreme Court Justice ...
Phenol exposure during pregnancy may affect boy’s fetal growth
A research consortium has just published an epidemiological study indicating that exposure to certain phenols during pregnancy, especially parabens and ...
Human ‘angry face’ knows no cultural divide, rooted in DNA
In the U.S., the thumbs-up is typically a gesture that everything’s just hunky-dory—but in the Middle East, it implies that ...
Spanish longevity genes linked to cholesterol metabolism
Hold the butter! The genetic secrets of centenarians are starting to be unravelled – and they hint that low cholesterol ...
