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.
How human chimeras could revolutionize science and medicine
The NIH appears ready to fund scientists who want to make and study human chimeras. What can we hope to ...
Men are from Earth, women are too: Sexes not so different when it comes to sex
There are gender differences in sexual behavior, to be sure, but with certain phenomena, women are far more similar to ...
Genes linked to ‘human seeking behavior’ in dogs tied to bipolar disorder, autism in man
They like to be close to us, make eye contact and communicate with us – unusual behaviour between two different ...
For black Americans, DNA ancestry tests contain troubling reminder of treatment of slaves
There’s now hundreds of ancestry reveal videos on YouTube and Facebook, featuring people looking for answers about the past in ...
Mothers should birth twins early, at 37 weeks, to prevent complications
Twin pregnancies are at high risk of stillbirths compared to mothers carrying just one baby. This risk increases 13-fold if ...
Concerns about amateur scientists toying with CRISPR rise as price drops
Using...CRISPR-Cas9...does not require a high level of scientific knowledge, raising concerns that malicious "biohackers" or careless enthusiasts might create something ...
Everything you need to know about three-parent babies
A baby boy has been born using DNA from three people – the first ever birth resulting from a new ...
Genetics may explain tendency towards violence in our evolutionary history
Humans are predisposed to murder each other, new research suggests, although it remains unclear if it’s down to genetics or ...
Looking back on ten years of induced pluripotent stem cell research
Research and emerging treatments with stem cells today can be traced to a startling discovery 10 years ago when Shinya ...
Our cells use genes from mother’s and father’s DNA differently
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research have characterized how and to what degree our cells utilize ...
Are genes more important than practice for excelling in games, sports, and academics?
[The] age-old debate: nature versus nurture, genetics versus effort. We’ve been having it long before we knew what DNA was...[T]he ...
Genes tied to birth weight in infants also linked to diabetes, heart disease later in life
Birth weight of babies is influenced by genes that are also linked to the risk of developing a range of ...
Turning body’s own defenses to fight tumors: Does CAR-T work?
There’s new hope that a much-hyped class of immunotherapies could revolutionize cancer treatment...But experts remain cautious about safety and efficacy ...
Each of us has a genetically-programmed aging clock
Five per cent of us are genetically programmed to age faster and die younger than everyone else, a groundbreaking new ...
World’s first baby born from new, controversial three parent embryo technique
A five-month-old boy is the first baby to be born using a new technique that incorporates DNA from three people... The ...
Hillary Clinton: Evolutionary “grandma hypothesis” meets the grandma candidate
Grandmothers played an important role in the evolution of human social relationships and as generational knowledge sinks. Now women of ...
Why autism genes persist in human gene pool
It has been suspected for some time that numerous defective genes are responsible for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but now, ...
Gene therapy technique developed to prevent cancer metastasis shows promise
The spread of malignant cells around the body, known as metastasis, is the leading cause of mortality in women with ...
Endurance training triggers wide variety of changes in gene activity
The physiological impact of regular endurance training can be visualized over time and is often used to prevent cardiovascular disease, ...
What studying rare genetic disorder teaches us about human’s ‘sixth sense’
With the help of two young patients with a unique neurological disorder, an initial study by scientists at the National ...
Genetic test for breast cancer could mislead women to take drastic action
A few years ago, my mother called with an urgent request...She wanted me to get tested...I immediately said no. BRCA1 and ...
DNA study reveals Aboriginal Australians as oldest civilization on Earth
A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back ...
Are migraines genetic?
There's a big debate right now in the migraine community around the underlying cause of the disease. The question is ...
Genetic therapies won’t solve depression anytime soon
Can a better understanding of the genetics of depression lead us to safer, more effective treatments for the disease? ...
Scientist create first map of gene interactions in cells
Researchers at the University of Toronto...have created the first map that shows the global genetic interaction network of a cell ...
Human evolution: How will our species change over next 100,000 years?
Since we became Homo sapiens, has evolution changed us in any way? Actually, yes. ... [An] example is the gene for ...
Companies betting big on biotech solutions for Zika, antibiotic resistant bacteria
[The overuse of antibiotics has] become a real problem: antibiotic-resistant pneumonia rates currently exceed 50% in the U.S. Clearly, there's ...
