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.
Depression and anxiety linked to early onset of Alzheimer’s
Investigators found the age of onset of AD is about 2 years earlier among patients with depression and 3 years ...
Video: Humans have lost many genes over the course of our evolution. Here’s how they helped define us
Our DNA holds thousands of dead genes and we’ve only just begun to unravel their stories. But one thing is ...
Vitamin-D and COVID: The polarized, messy debate and whether you should consider taking it
Views on Vitamin D are almost as polarized as politics; in fact the whole debate around COVID-19 and vitamin D ...
Viewpoint: 20 years into the human genome revolution, how can we make genomics more accessible and transparent?
[20 years after the Human Genome Project,] many of the ethical, legal and social implications of genome research — including ...
20 years after the Human Genome Project: Efforts are underway to capture human genetic diversity and catalog missing DNA
The Human Genome Project — which built the blueprint, called the human reference genome — has changed the way medical ...
Obesity contributor? Fructose — a commonly used sweetener — disrupts our immune system, study shows
Fructose is a type of simple sugar that makes up 50% of table sugar. It is found in sugary drinks ...
What’s in the biomedical pipeline for CRISPR gene editing?
One great attraction of Crispr, says Niren Murthy, a bioengineer at Berkeley, is that it could be a one-shot affair ...
‘Friendship, family and culture’: Surprising evolution-based attributes that dolphins share with humans
Scientists like Dr Blake Morton, a Lecturer of Psychology from the University of Hull, suggest that [personality similarities across species] ...
Cancer dates back millions of years. Now we are cracking its evolutionary code
Cancer cells are on a continual evolutionary journey of mutation and proliferation, creating a genetically diverse population with a range ...
Why did humans survive while our Denisovan and Neanderthal cousins died out? Just one gene could have made all the difference
Stem cells, the self-renewing precursors of other cell types, can be used to build brain organoids [or] "mini brains" in ...
Evolution of literacy: How Protestantism and the Bible rewired Medieval brains
Of course, writing systems are thousands of years old, found in ancient Sumer, China, and Egypt, but in most literate ...
Do you thrive in cold weather? 20% of people have a genetic mutation that keeps skeletal muscles warmer
Skeletal muscle comprises fast-twitch (white) fibers that fatigue quickly and slow-twitch (red) fibers that are more resistant to fatigue. The ...
Infographic: History’s 11 deadliest plagues, from the Antonine epidemic in ancient Rome to COVID-19
The novel coronavirus took just a few months to sweep the globe. More than 2.5 million people around the world ...
Navigating advertising landmines on the path to egg freezing
More women in the UK than ever before are considering freezing their eggs, with the sharp rise in inquiries at ...
A complicated legacy: Reassessing Darwin‘s views on race and gender 150 years after the ‘The Descent of Man’
Darwin was a liberal, and an abolitionist, perhaps influenced by his taxidermy tutor in Edinburgh, a Guyanese man called John ...
‘Dark angels of evolution, terrific and terrible’: How viruses have shaped evolution, for better or for worse
[Many] viruses bring adaptive benefits, not harms, to life on Earth, including ours. We couldn’t continue without them. We wouldn’t ...
20 year anniversary of the mapping of the human genome: What does the future hold?
The coalescence of bioinformatics and computational biology around algorithms has... given rise to new institutional forms and new markets for ...
Taking Vitamin C or zinc to fight a cold or COVID? New study shows they have no effect
Over the years, scientific studies have not conclusively shown that [zinc or vitamin C] can help overcome illnesses such as ...
How animals perceive time
[Are animals] entirely free from the temporal plane? Do they perceive it in any way? Do some species perceive it ...
RNA hacking: How the miraculous tools of the genetics revolution will transform healthcare and the world
[mRNA COVID] vaccines, in essence, transform our bodies into personalized manufacturing plants producing an otherwise foreign object to trigger our ...
One a day keeps the doctor away? Eating apples appears to boost brain function
Given that apples are one of the most widely consumed fruits in the world, [researchers Tara Louise] Walker, [Gerd] Kempermann ...
Viewpoint: ‘Genetic reductionism’ — Why CRISPR is not the answer to every problem
Referring to DNA as the code of life, a rigid blueprint for who we are, implies that we are the ...
‘GUYnecology’ and ‘Phallacy’: Two new books take on the ups and downs of male appendages
It can stretch up to nine times your body length (if you’re a barnacle); be a detachable tentacle covered in ...
Video: The saga of how humans developed the ability to talk
The evolution of our ability to speak is its own epic saga and it’s worth pausing to appreciate that. It’s ...
Methusalah dogs are pushing the boundaries of cognitive science
Living with people means dogs experience near-identical social and environmental influences on a daily basis. They show off a host ...
The potential downside of genetic health screenings
Doctors are increasingly testing people’s genes for signs of hereditary risks for cancer, said Dr. Allison Kurian, a medical oncologist ...
Who are you calling bird-brained? Crows and other corvids display self-awareness and consciousness
The corvid family of birds, which includes crows, ravens, jays and magpies, had been observed previously to use tools, as ...
