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.
We now know the mechanisms of aging, but how do you slow down the process?
The next frontier is to target the basic biology of aging and come up with new interventions to slow it ...
Viewpoint: Weight loss drug boom raises host of unaddressed ethical and scientific questions
The world has launched into an era of injectables not just to treat obesity but to manage weight. Is that ...
‘We will publish anything!’ — Here’s how predatory journal mills work
A predatory journal exists solely to make money. It’s like a parasite on the back of the scientific endeavour ...
Only 2% of the world’s population has green eyes. Why so few?
Green eyes are estimated at 2 percent of the population worldwide and prevalence is much higher in certain European countries ...
AI-discovered drug could help 1.6 million Americans with inflammatory bowel disease
IBD impacts 1.6 million people in the U.S. — and a new artificial intelligence-generated drug could help alleviate symptoms ...
Podcast: Why we ‘evolved not to lose weight’
The evolutionary reasons why it's hard to lose weight and keep it off: fat helped early humans stay alive ...
‘We need to stem the flow of bogus research’: Effort under way to challenge academic ‘paper mills’
Poor-quality studies are polluting the literature — a group will study the businesses that produce them to stem the flow ...
Are Chinese scientists going rogue on latest COVID research? Experimental strain found 100% lethal in ‘humanized’ mice
Chinese scientists created a mutant COVID-19 strain, GX_P2V, with a 100% lethality rate in "humanized" mice ...
Scans of 10,000 brains show dramatic memory benefits from just 4 minutes of daily exercise
Exercising for 25 minutes a week, or less than four minutes a day, could help to bulk up our brains ...
Humans, apes and monkeys: Parts of primate DNA have been stable over 65 million years of evolution
Scientists have found that 3% to 5% of the genes in the human genome, which descended from a common ancestor ...
We may soon be able to treat hearing loss from loud noises and aging with drugs
Researchers have found a gene that links deafness to cell death in the inner ear in humans – creating new ...
Finding ‘beating heart cadavers’ — That’s what’s needed to fuel gene-edited organ research
The University of Pennsylvania connected a pig liver to a brain-dead person in an experiment that lasted for three days ...
Anti-aging elixirs: As search for life-extending drugs expands, ethical questions emerge
Scientists are now researching drugs in many places around the world that might enable us to live even longer ...
Humans have been chewing gum for nearly 10,000 years
A new study of the DNA in a chewing gum shows that one of the individuals had severe problems with ...
Elon Musk’s Neuralink implanted in a human, who is recovering well, billionaire tweets
Elon Musk said on the social media platform X on January 29 that the first human patient has received a brain implant developed ...
Viewpoint: Can AI chatbots understand the words they’re processing?
Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills to understand the words ...
‘The edge of chaos’: Why switching tasks makes our brains go haywire
Study shows that our brains exist between chaos and stability—a finding that could be used to help tweak them either ...
Can cannabis make your workout more productive?
A bit of weed before a workout can boost motivation and make exercise more enjoyable. But if performance is the ...
Ear-ringing tinnitus is unrelenting and untreatable. Here’s a new strategy on how to live with it
An innovative treatment offers hope to the millions of people who hear sounds that others don’t. Here’s how it works ...
Video: Tyrannosaurus rex probably didn’t roar like a lion. Here’s how they might have sounded
Ask a researcher: Tyrannosaurus rex probably didn't roar like a lion. The sound it made might have been even scarier ...
Here are genetic reasons why some people age more quickly than others
Which genes are involved in aging and longevity? How are they involved? What are the therapeutic implications? ...
Understanding memory: Solving the puzzle of how the brain keeps recollections in order
Norwegian researchers are on the trail of a new and important piece in the large puzzle that is our brain ...
Maybe the Black Death did not reshape human evolution after all
An ancient-DNA study of medieval Cambridge found no sign of genes that helped people to survive the plague ...
Empathy and anticipation of desires: Children have it, but apes do not
Have you ever guessed what dish your significant other would order at a restaurant before they even picked up the ...
Genetically modified pigs livers could save human lives. Here’s how
Organ transplants save lives, but specimens from the right donors are in short supply, and scientists are searching for more ...
How might sharply curtailing calories slow the aging process?
Restricting calories is known to improve health and increase lifespan, but much of how it does so remains a mystery, ...
‘There is no sound I don’t like’ — In gene editing breakthrough, Lilly’s 30-day gene therapy restores hearing of 11-year old boy, with more deafness treatments on the way
The genetic treatment targeted a particular kind of congenital deafness and will soon be tried in children who are younger ...
