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.
Biochip closely mimics biological cells
Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery, but mimicking the intricate networks and dynamic interactions that are inherent ...
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 ...
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 ...
IBM chip mimics brain, marks advancement in artificial intelligence
The human brain is the world's most sophisticated computer capable of learning new things on the fly, using very little ...
Can tobacco plant help cure Ebola?
It's an eye-catching angle in the story of an experimental treatment for Ebola: The drug comes from tobacco plants that ...
How data mining targets pregnant mothers
For me, like most potential parents, the first test I took was not genetic. Instead it was a simple pregnancy ...
Can identifying ‘suicide genes’ help predict risk?
No one could have predicted that Oscar-winning comedian Robin Williams would kill himself. Or could they? When someone commits suicide, ...
‘Subway’ map tracks journey of engineered stem cells
The differentiation of engineered stem cells may be imagined as a subway journey, where the genetic equivalents of missing a transfer or ...
Bacteria may be key to immunity, DNA manipulation
Bacteria’s ability to destroy viruses has long puzzled scientists, but researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health ...
More details on Google’s Baseline human health project
Google X’s new Baseline Project was made public in July. Although widely reported that the study would only focus on ...
When is a ‘modified organism’ a GMO?
Where is the threshold between natural "involvement" and unnatural "interference" when using technology to improve our food? ...
Should Myriad make breast cancer data available for clinical research?
Myriad Genetics may have lost its singular hold on the market for BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing in May 2013 when ...
Scientists apply century-old technique to shrink tumors using bacteria
Inspired by hundred-year-old accounts of how bacterial infections coincided with cancer remissions, scientists have shown that injections of a weakened bacterium — Clostridium ...
Are we puppets of our own gut bacteria?
Your body is home to about 100 trillion bacteria and other microbes, collectively known as your microbiome. Naturalists first became aware ...
New therapy advances lung cancer treatment, personalized medicine
Small RNA molecules, including microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), offer tremendous potential as new therapeutic agents to inhibit ...
Babies’ DNA “tweets” signal indicating bacterial infection
Babies suffering from bacterial infections like sepsis could benefit from better treatment, thanks to a ground-breaking study. For the first ...
Common cleaning products disrupt pregnancy in mice. Do humans face same danger?
Mice exposed to disinfectants in commercial-grade cleaning products took longer to get pregnant, had fewer pups and suffered more miscarriages ...
Blood-forming stem cells produced in laboratory for potential use in cancer treatment
Scientists in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, have discovered how the body produces blood-forming stem cells which exist in bone marrow ...
Pfizer, 23andMe working together to develop treatment for inflammatory bowel disease
Genetics-testing startup 23andMe said Tuesday it is teaming up with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to study the genetics of inflammatory bowel disease, ...
Mapping evolutionary history with genes for smell
Animals have been smelling for hundreds of millions of years, but the evolution of that sense is difficult to trace ...
Researchers tackle questions on origin of life on Earth
All life on Earth came from one common ancestor – a single-celled organism – but what it looked like, how ...
Twins, separated and reuinted, illustrate genetic strength
Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were identical twins raised apart from the age of four weeks. When the twins were finally ...
Information-rich society drains our brains of creativity if we don’t take needed breaks
Creativity, argues neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, requires mental downtown for ideas and connections to bubble up out of our knowledge base ...
Is epigenetics being exploited by the media?
Epigenetics has seen a flurry of research and headlines lately, achieving science-buzzword status. But is the immature nature of the ...
Can stem cells aid in brain recovery after stroke?
Five patients received the treatment in a pilot study conducted by doctors at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and scientists at Imperial ...
Role of epigenetics in blood formation revealed, with surprising results
The process of differentiation – in which a stem cell becomes a specialized mature blood cell – is controlled by ...
Harvard stem cell scientist takes sabbatical following fraud scandal
Charles Vacanti, a Harvard anesthesiologist and stem cell pioneer whose name appeared on both retracted STAP stem cell papers, is ...
