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.
Is there intelligent life in space? Stephen Hawking thinks so, and has launched massive search
More than a half-century after the first modern search for communicating extraterrestrial life, humanity’s quest to find intelligent beings in ...
Natural genetic mutations inspire promising bio-pharmaceutical treatments
Steven Pete can’t feel pain. Timothy Dreyer has bones several times thicker than the average human. Both conditions were caused ...
Not ‘born this way’: Genes suggest sexual orientation fluid, not fixed trait
Gay rights shouldn't depend on how a person came to be gay, and we should embrace the fact that sexuality ...
Dating startup uses controversial / questionable science to help you find your soul mate
In honor of Valentine’s Day, Nazuki Andoh, 37, and Jesse Gronwall, 30, received a small kit in the mail. It contained ...
Star Trek, synbio and sustainable food: Will Friends of the Earth and other activists block the future?
Far as we are from instantaneous synthesis of food on command, advances in synbio and genetic engineering offer a glimpse ...
A rabbi and an alien walk into a bar: What happens when religious leaders meet extraterrestrials?
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) presents a challenge for the major religions, who might find themselves threatened if alien ...
Cripr-Cas9 DNA editing opens world of possibilities—and Pandora’s box
Crispr-Cas9 makes it easy, cheap, and fast to move genes around—any genes, in any living thing, from bacteria to people ...
US genetic health studies fail to accurately represent country’s ethnic makeup
The clock is ticking for experts charged with designing a U.S. government programme to collect genetic, physiological and other health ...
What did the first humans to leave Africa look like?
The most comprehensive dataset ever assembled on our early human ancestors provides evidence that the first humans emerged in South ...
What has CRISPR accomplished in three years, and what are the dangers we’ll have to face?
Preeminent genetic researchers like David Baltimore, then at MIT, went to the Asilomar conference in 1975 to grapple with the ...
Is editing RNA the key to prolonging life?
If someone was going to attempt to stop aging, what would be the first step? Researchers at the Center for ...
Water: California drought yet water bottles everywhere
Humanity's future depends on how we manage our interactions with water. This takes the form of how we package it, ...
Amazonians distant cousins of Australasians through ancient genetic link
Some people in the Brazilian Amazon are very distant relations of indigenous Australians, New Guineans and other Australasians, two groups ...
Genome’s most confusing features a lot more fun when explained through art
How can cells that contain the same DNA end up so different from each other? That is not only a ...
Some stem cell clinics offer costly, unproven procedures, in US and abroad
Stem cell treatments of various kinds are now widely available in America at more than 100 stem cell clinics offering ...
Can anything be done to stop the growing threat of antibiotic resistance?
Matt Cooper, a medical chemist at the University of Queensland, Australia, puffs out his cheeks and scratches his head. He’s ...
There’s no ‘warrior gene’…but there may be a warrior genotype
I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but you don’t have a gene for being tall, or a gene for caffeine ...
Insatiable sweet tooth? Blame genetics
According to a new study published in the journal Twin Research and Human Genetics, nearly one-third of our ability to taste sweetness comes from ...
20th century eugenists guided women on selecting perfect mate
For American women in the early twentieth century, marriage was a dangerous affair. Upon her marriage, a woman’s civic and ...
Synthetic components added to DNA expand genetic alphabet
DNA stores our genetic code in an elegant double helix. But some argue that this elegance is overrated. “DNA as a ...
Pseudoscience appropriates ‘epigenetics’ with promise of life-changing cures
Lots of real scientific terms – such as “neuro” or “nano” – get borrowed for a spot of buzzword scienceyness. Epigenetics is ...
Neuroscience of free will: Does reaching for beer with robotic arm mean free will doesn’t exist?
If we can predict a person’s intentions by picking up brain signals then how 'free' is our will and are ...
Ancestry following 23andMe into consumer genetics business
With the launch of its AncestryHealth website, Ancestry continues to play Microsoft to 23andMe’s Apple. It may not be as ...
Dogs love TV? Our canine partners have evolved human-like traits
It's likely no surprise to dog owners, but growing research suggests that man's best friend often acts more human than ...
“The Vital Question” book explores evolutionary origins of life
How did rocks, air and water coalesce into the first living creatures on the primordial Earth? Why did complex life like ...
Apes, like humans, show bias towards positive spin
Are you likelier to buy an expensive diet pill when you hear it has helped 40 percent of people or ...
Kissing around the world: How do different cultures show intimacy?
Not all people express love and adoration through their lips. In fact, new research published in American Anthropologist reports that only 46 percent of cultures kiss ...
