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.
US has homegrown stem cell controversy
Boston-based stem cell researcher Piero Anverza is under formal investigation after retracting prominent papers on stem cells and heart disease ...
Cure for HIV? New gene-editing technique shows promise
A few lucky individuals have a mutation that makes them highly resistant to HIV. This mutation is also behind the ...
Oxytocin may be secret hormone that fights aging
Oxytocin is best known for its role as a crucial human bonding hormone. A new study suggests it's also needed ...
Holocaust survivors studied to determine if trauma-induced mental illness can be inherited
On April 23, 1945, my father, Gershon Glausiusz, was liberated from the Nazis. He was 10 years old. Two weeks earlier, he ...
New book examines the evolution of left-handedness
The question of why some humans are left-handed — including such notable specimens as Plato, Charles Darwin, Carl Sagan, Debbie ...
Don’t lose sight of the environment’s impact on gene expression
In his book The Triple Helix, Richard Lewontin told the story of the molecular biologist and Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner, ...
Personalized vaccines treat kidney cancer
A highly personalized medical technique is allowing patients with advanced kidney cancer to live nearly three times as long as ...
Year after Myriad’s breast cancer test patent monopoly broken, data collection explodes
When the US diagnostics giant Myriad Genetics had its legal monopoly on breast-cancer gene testing eliminated one year ago, the ...
After decade of controversy, fetal stem cells reemerge as Parkison’s treatment target
A neurosurgery team will next month transplant cells from aborted human fetuses into the brain of a person with Parkinson’s ...
Writing by hand may open a conduit to human creativity. Have we evolved to write?
Studies show the cognitive and physiological uniqueness of handwriting. Did humans evolve to write? ...
Exercise is related to health microbiome, but may not cause it
Bernat Olle points to a "news" story in Medpage Today: Exercise Boosts Gut Microbiome Diversity by Kristina Fiore. Well, so ...
Can GMO crops help fight global warming?
In the fight against global warming, our planet's ability to reflect light and heat is dropping. In a warming world, ...
New York’s Cardinal Joseph O’Connor was born to Jewish mother, daughter of a rabbi
In his 16 years as the Catholic Church’s top official in New York, Cardinal John Joseph O’Connor was a staunch ...
Humans think of themselves as special but we’re just another animal
Even though you are reading this on a sophisticated electronic device, you are an animal. That's the most radical idea ...
GM mosquito breakthrough: Make them all males
Scientists have hailed the genetic modification of mosquitoes that could crash the insect’s populations as a “quantum leap” that will ...
MERS papers are duplicates, point to dysfunction is Saudi scientific community
A great story can be told again and again. But scientists working on the deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) ...
Genes of best sleepers might offer clues for many diseases
In a lab at the University of California, San Francisco, a husband-and-wife team is working to unravel the secrets of ...
BRCA1&2 negative women also seeking double mastectomy at increasing rates
Kathryn Edwards always thought that if she were ever diagnosed with breast cancer, "I'm taking them both." So when her ...
Corals and humans evolved complex mechanisms for necessary cell death
For us to live, parts of us must die. Every day, billions of our cells shrink, break up into small ...
Does our anthropocentric view of genetics keep us from scientific discovery?
We often attribute disease causing agency to microbes. But any human heath effects they have were discovered haphazardly through evolution ...
Google will be home for 10,000 genomes for autism research
Google Inc. and Autism Speaks, a major autism research foundation, plan to announce on Tuesday a deal in which the ...
Human fetal biology is much more complex than the personhood movement is equipped to handle
What if at the very beginning stages of development you absorbed your twin’s cells? You’d be twins—a phenomenon called a ...
Chromosome ‘telomeres’ that protect human health can also lead to deadly brain cancer
Telomeres are to chromosomes what plastic caps are to the ends of shoelaces - they stop them unravelling as they ...
Genes controling eye color also affect pain perception
They're often referred to as the windows to the soul, but now it's been claimed your eyes can actually reveal ...
Insect species help foresnic scientists
In a thick wooded area, a dead body lies. Within 5 to 10 minutes, a slew of tiny winged visitors ...
Couple with history of obesity arrested because of son’s weight
A couple in the United Kingdom has been arrested for neglect and child cruelty for letting their 11-year-old son become ...
Evolution made modern human females thinner than ancestors
Modern day women have slim hips and narrower waists thanks to evolution - not calorie couting. Scientists made the discovery ...
