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.
Identical twin DNA no longer indistinguishable
It’s such a great conceit for a crime show: guy commits murder; guy denies it; turns out it was guy’s ...
Resolve to be good to your genes in 2014
The New Year occasions all kinds of resolutions (which only 8% of people keep, according to Forbes magazine), but almost ...
Repeated patterns in DNA may be missing piece of the story of human evolution
Science is just starting to unlock what we can learn from duplicated regions of DNA in the genes of humans ...
Does reading a novel physically change your brain?
According to a new study, reading a book can physically alter a person's brain. But it seems the researchers might ...
Disruptive genomics: Is China’s BGI the epicenter of the world’s biotech revolution?
What might be the consequences when we isolate the genes for IQ? Is cheap sequencing a good thing? Is there ...
Media missed important message when covering Angelina Jolie’s preventative mastectomy
Angelina Jolie's preventative double mastectomy was one of the biggest genetics stories of 2013. But, new studies show, the media ...
Ancient European genomes reveal jumbled ancestry
Newly released genome sequences from almost a dozen early human inhabitants of Europe suggest that the continent was once a ...
Plant DNA reveals secrets of human genome
What do cells, genes, mutations, transposons, RNA silencing, and DNA recombination have in common? All were discovered first in plants ...
Whiteness and Europeans haven’t always gone hand-in-hand
One of the most interesting results in the preprint on ancient European genetics (or more accurately, the ethnogenesis of Europeans ...
Stonehenge Man provides rare look at face of British prehistory
Tourists entering English Heritage's new £27 million visitor centre at Stonehenge will quickly confront its most spectacular exhibit – a ...
Wish for 2014: Any ancient African DNA sample
What's on your wish list for the new year in the world of anthropology and human genetics? Here's my #1 ...
Online hub for scientists to store and share genetic data
We all have vast and complicated datasets buried within us, and genomics startup DNAnexus wants to set that data free ...
Did Pew stumble in its annual poll on support for evolution, exaggerating Republican-Democrat differences??
A new poll, showing Republicans are increasingly skeptical of evolution, is being questioned for seemingly heightening differences in beliefs between ...
‘Brainlike’ computers, able to learn from own mistakes, could arrive in 2014
The first commercial version of a new kind of computer chip, which would allow computers to learn from their own ...
When consumer genetic test results don’t agree
I like to plan ahead; that much I knew about myself before I plunged into exploring my genetic code. I’m ...
Single-cell sequencing: Nature’s 2013 method of the year
Single-cell sequencing edged out other contenders as our choice of Method of the Year in 2013. These techniques really came ...
Advances in using tailored cell cultures to test genetic disease treatments
Here’s a vision of the future. You’re diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. Your doctors take a sample of your ...
Genetics prof won’t waste his money on a DNA test in 2014
When a reporter for the New York Times set out to test three genetic tests, she received extremely varied results ...
New age of genetic testing advances, despite FDA’s dust-up with 23andMe
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month ordered startup 23andMe to stop marketing its $99 genetic analysis kit, ...
Future pharma: Led by US scientists, glow-in-the-dark pigs bred in China
Pigs engineered with jellyfish DNA to emit a greenish glow in ultraviolet light are a key step in developing effective, ...
What to consider before undergoing a DNA test
As the price of sequencing a person’s entire DNA has tumbled from $1 billion a decade ago to a few ...
Italian woman with genetic disease condemns death threats received after defending animal experiments
An Italian woman suffering from a rare genetic illness has spoken out against the death wishes she was sent after ...
New year, new flu evolution
Every year around this time, the age-old practice of making New Year’s Resolutions takes center stage as millions of people ...
Will 2014 be year of the 1-million-year-old genome?
Dinosaurs resurrected using preserved DNA still only exist in Jurassic Park, but we're making great strides in sequencing the genomes ...
Rewinding cell development: Sisters’ cells reveal rare gene mutation
As siblings, Hayley and Bari Mogul share biological characteristics. Unfortunately one that they share is a rare metabolic disorder that ...
Could doctors diagnose all types of cancer with one drop of blood?
Despite incredible diversity among cancer cells, researchers and startup companies are hoping to find a silver bullet test to diagnose ...
How do cystic fibrosis bacteria evolve to thrive in human lungs?
The bacterium that's the most important pathogen in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) has genetically evolved and adapted to survive ...
