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.
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Fly’s genome helps identify genes involved in human neurological diseases
The combination of fly genetics and genomics with human genome knowledge enables rapid identification of human disease-causing mutations, including those ...
Ebola crisis raises dilemma over releasing vaccines without usual evaluation
Normally it takes years to prove a new vaccine is both safe and effective before it can be used in ...
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 ...
Genetic testing to map Welsh ancestry to 9,000BC
It’s a question as old as the mountains and valleys of our nation – who are the Welsh? And the ...
Ice Storm of 1998 may have altered DNA of unborn babies
Epigenetics has been used and abused in many ways - can it tell researchers that an expectant mother lived without ...
Can the same regulatory systems that now oversee GMOs work for synthetic biology?
As synthetic biology is poised to leave labs and enter our lives, questions about regulation are cropping up. Can existing ...
Is the search for “IQ genes” a fool’s errand?
Science writer David Dobbs has definitively described the voracious appetite of the "selfish gene" meme, pointing out that the notion of individual ...
60-million-year-old fossils found in China revolutionizing evolution of complex life
Three spherical fossils discovered in China are believed to be from the world's earliest animals, dating back 600 million years ...
Stress caused by poverty reduces mom’s ability to nurture—and may be passed on in genes
From the inside, nothing in the world feels more powerful than our impulse to care for helpless children. But new ...
Why the US was so unprepared to handle Ebola
It was a small victory in a grim and runaway catastrophe. In July, Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, both American ...
Ashkenazi Jews descended from Khazarian converts? One Arab view of the evidence
Many of those interested in studying the conspiracy have become convinced that the only way to explain the depth of ...
Persistence of the massive microbiome myth
Scientists and layman alike have long touted the estimate that microbial cells outnumber humans by 10 to 1. While that ...
Developing new antibiotics from human microbiome
No novel classes of antibiotic drugs have been produced for 25 years and, though scare stories about the consequences of emerging ...
How the world has fumbled the Ebola crisis
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently projected that if trends continue unimpeded, cases of Ebola could pass the million ...
Do you drink too much alcohol? It’s partly in the genes
How people perceive and taste alcohol depends partly on genetic factors, and that influences whether they "like" and how much ...
Uncovering human history in Ethiopia, world’s oldest graveyard
Charles Darwin knew humans evolved from apes, but he died before the strongest fossils that prove our connection with primates ...
