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.
Beware of the biomedical industrial complex
Dr. Steve McKnight, President of the American Society For Biochemistry And Molecular Biology, has written an article that must be as ...
Why there probably is no ‘perfect’ human gut microbiome
Jeff Leach, at the "Human Food Project", has written pungently about a bout of microbiome self-experimentation: "(Re)Becoming Human: what happened the ...
DNA sequencing saves newborns’ lives, but what happens to personal genetic information?
By two months of age, the boy was near death. He had spent his entire short life in the neonatal ...
Are Ebola drug researchers developing ‘death drugs’ that could wipe out humanity? Yes, by logic of anti-GMOers
It's perplexing that strident anti-GMO critics who regularly harp on the "danger" of harvesting a "foreign" gene from one species ...
Central Park home to more wildlife than meets the eye
In 2003, an army of 350 scientists and volunteers swept out across Central Park. Their mission, called a BioBlitz, was ...
Coming to terms with having a child with an inherited genetic disorder
When my oldest daughter Leah was born, many people made the same observation: “Look at those fingers! So long and ...
Personal genomics company says it will solve puzzle of Welsh origins
A British genetics company is asking for Welsh participants to help discover the mysterious genetic origins of the famously redheaded ...
‘Junk DNA’ may sometimes contain useful genes
Scientifically speaking, there is no bad DNA, though we like to blame it for unruly hair, klutziness or poor gardening ...
Critics of ‘three-person’ IVF: Media oversimplifies role of mitochondrial genome
If you’ve read anything at all promoting 3-person IVF, you’ve no doubt seen the analogy that the cellular organelles called mitochondria ...
Video: Can we ever create a real-life Jurassic Park?
For the Jurassic Park fans out there, let's be honest, most of us have considered the question Q asks, "Do ...
Common genetic link found between stress, heart disease
A new genetic finding from Duke Medicine suggests that some people who are prone to hostility, anxiety and depression might ...
Can stem cells repair damaged eyes and reverse blindness?
Hundreds of thousands of people who are registered blind have been offered new hope after scientists discovered special stem cells ...
Our gut microbes get fed, even when we do not
For bacteria, the mammalian gut is like Shangri-La. It’s warm and consistently so, sheltered from the environment, and regularly flooded ...
IBM’s Watson assesses genetic risk for sudden cardiac arrest
Sudden cardiac arrests kill someone every five seconds. Now the fact-finding power of Watson, IBM's Jeopardy-winning supercomputer, is being harnessed to help ...
Single dose of anti-depressant alters brain? Maybe, but what does that mean?
All drugs "alter" the brain's connectivity, so that's hardly a surprise. But what does that mean? Are the changes ongoing ...
Do mysterious ‘jumping genes’ fast track evolution?
Genomes have a lot of moving parts. Some stretches of DNA try to assimilate and copy themselves in novel places, ...
Intelligence genes: Elusive but real
The question of the degree to which genes control intelligence has been so controversial that many geneticists avoid pursuing it ...
What’s life like for the transgendered after sexual reassignment surgery?
People who identify with a gender other than the one they were born with often suffer from societal pressures and ...
Newly discovered bird species in danger from deforestation
Discovering a new species isn’t always as easy as saying “Look, there’s a new species!” In the case of a ...
Killer bacterium takes six different forms
Every ten seconds a human being dies from Streptococcus pneumoniae infection, also known as pneumococcus, making it a leading global killer.An interdisciplinary ...
Ancient skeleton’s DNA window into earliest modern human group
The skeleton of a man who lived more than 2300 years ago and foraged food from the ocean off southern ...
New traits evolved thanks to duplication of genes
Geneticists at Trinity College Dublin have made a major breakthrough with important implications for understanding the evolution of genomes in ...
Targeting cancer genetics has tripled surviovorship in last 40 years
About 14.5 million people in the United States have outlasted cancer or lived with a malignancy for more than five ...
23andMe moves into Canada, will report health information
While the Food and Drug Administration slowly mulls the legality of the low-cost genetics tests offered by 23andMe, the Mountain ...
Can spider genes be genetically engineered to make eco-friendly cars?
Scientists are looking to create genetically engineered spider webs—which pound for pound is stronger than steel—to make products that might ...
How a biology professor teaches God and evolution
Every year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isn’t, as you ...
Humans possess more extensive virome than previously thought
Your body is a wonderland… for viruses, found a new study published in BMC Biology. This research was a peek into The Human ...
