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.
If you could design your own child, what characteristics would you choose?
Imagine a world where you could choose what your baby would look like. Would you want him to have green ...
Genetic variants lend insight into behavioral traits
Three genetic variants have been found to be significantly associated with educational attainment in certain individuals, according to a recent ...
Hefty twins shed light on obesity paradox
They are identical in almost every way, except one twin is fat and the other is thin. Now a study ...
The delicious, religious debate over junk DNA
What exactly do "non-coding" regions of DNA do? As scientists sequence more genomes, we get closer to the answer to ...
Gene deletions found in individuals with autism
Using powerful genetic sequencing technology, a team of investigators, led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount ...
Genetic influence on cognition increases with age
About 70 percent of a person's intelligence can be explained by their DNA -- and those genetic influences only get ...
Canadian feds look at plan to collect DNA from suspects upon arrest
The federal government is considering a move to collect DNA samples from suspects upon arrest for certain crimes, a significant ...
Researchers find a gene for obesity
Over four years, 1,200 pigs were given nearly unlimited access to food to see how much they'd eat, how often, ...
Gene scans solve mystery diseases in kids, adults
They were mystery diseases that had stumped doctors for years — adults with strange symptoms and children with neurological problems, ...
Father discovers cure for sons’ rare genetic disease
Nick Sireau's sons Julien, 12, and Daniel, 10, suffer from alkaptonuria, a genetic disorder affecting just one in 500,000 people ...
Genetically modified bacteria produce fifty percent more fuel
Researchers at UCLA have opened a path to cheaper and cleaner biofuels by using genetic engineering to fundamentally change how ...
Bacteria possible new source of biofuel
Researchers tweaked genes in E. Coli bacteria so that instead of producing carbon dioxide as a waste product, they produce ...
Steve Jobs’s legacy in personalized medicine
The tech industry's investment in personalized medicine and cancer genome sequencing is pushing the field forward ...
How having three parents leads to disease-free kids
This summer, government health officials in the United Kingdom made headlines by announcing that they will let scientists create babies ...
Five ways medicine is getting personal
Genomics is the study of the human genome, genetic mapping and DNA sequencing. Sounds like the stuff of science fiction, ...
Neural stem cells pulled from rat’s brain using magnet
It's like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Researchers have reached inside the brain of a rat and pulled ...
Could DNA be encoding our political beliefs?
As scientists further investigate the human genome, more behaviors can be tied to genetics. Is political leaning one them? ...
Left or right handedness may not be genetic
10 percent of the US is left handed and that is a similar ratio to many populations around the world ...
Genetic testing to be easier under Obamacare
Open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act began Tuesday and in the legislation's all-inclusive policy programs are a variety of preventative services ...
Genetically modified cold virus a ‘promising’ new TB vaccine
Researchers at McMaster University are heralding the success of early trials of a “booster” vaccine that could serve as a potent ...
Are the ethics of Breaking Bad really Darwinian?
Darwin's ideas are frequently distorted and used as labels for humans. And TV shows. But evolution isn’t as simple as ...
Mice get replacement glands, grown from scratch
It'll make you cry, or salivate. Takashi Tsuji at Tokyo University of Science in Japan, and colleagues have created tear and salivary ...
Your genome is a post-apocalyptic wasteland
Contrary to what you may have heard, your genome is not a highly sophisticated, finely tuned data storage and processing ...
The human genome’s mapped. Where are all the miracle drugs?
Sequencing the human genome seemed like a discovery so important that it couldn’t be overhyped—we had, after all, transcribed the ...
Will mapping parents’ DNA help offspring or just freak people out?
The more we learn about mutations in our DNA, the more it seem like we’re running around in a dark ...
Engineers have invented a programming language to build DNA
Forget Python and Java. Ruby? Get outta here. If you're gonna learn to write code, you better make it useful—so ...
When will gene therapy come to the U.S.?
For patients with genetic diseases, gene therapy could offer a lifetime of benefits after a single treatment. For cancer patients, ...
