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.
Father discovers cure for sons’ rare genetic disease
Nick Sireau's sons Julien, 12, and Daniel, 10, suffer from alkaptonuria, a genetic disorder affecting just one in 500,000 people ...
Genetically modified bacteria produce fifty percent more fuel
Researchers at UCLA have opened a path to cheaper and cleaner biofuels by using genetic engineering to fundamentally change how ...
Bacteria possible new source of biofuel
Researchers tweaked genes in E. Coli bacteria so that instead of producing carbon dioxide as a waste product, they produce ...
Could DNA be encoding our political beliefs?
As scientists further investigate the human genome, more behaviors can be tied to genetics. Is political leaning one them? ...
Left or right handedness may not be genetic
10 percent of the US is left handed and that is a similar ratio to many populations around the world ...
Genetic testing to be easier under Obamacare
Open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act began Tuesday and in the legislation's all-inclusive policy programs are a variety of preventative services ...
Genetically modified cold virus a ‘promising’ new TB vaccine
Researchers at McMaster University are heralding the success of early trials of a “booster” vaccine that could serve as a potent ...
Steve Jobs’s legacy in personalized medicine
The tech industry's investment in personalized medicine and cancer genome sequencing is pushing the field forward ...
How having three parents leads to disease-free kids
This summer, government health officials in the United Kingdom made headlines by announcing that they will let scientists create babies ...
Five ways medicine is getting personal
Genomics is the study of the human genome, genetic mapping and DNA sequencing. Sounds like the stuff of science fiction, ...
Neural stem cells pulled from rat’s brain using magnet
It's like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Researchers have reached inside the brain of a rat and pulled ...
Mice get replacement glands, grown from scratch
It'll make you cry, or salivate. Takashi Tsuji at Tokyo University of Science in Japan, and colleagues have created tear and salivary ...
Your genome is a post-apocalyptic wasteland
Contrary to what you may have heard, your genome is not a highly sophisticated, finely tuned data storage and processing ...
The human genome’s mapped. Where are all the miracle drugs?
Sequencing the human genome seemed like a discovery so important that it couldn’t be overhyped—we had, after all, transcribed the ...
Will mapping parents’ DNA help offspring or just freak people out?
The more we learn about mutations in our DNA, the more it seem like we’re running around in a dark ...
Engineers have invented a programming language to build DNA
Forget Python and Java. Ruby? Get outta here. If you're gonna learn to write code, you better make it useful—so ...
When will gene therapy come to the U.S.?
For patients with genetic diseases, gene therapy could offer a lifetime of benefits after a single treatment. For cancer patients, ...
Are the ethics of Breaking Bad really Darwinian?
Darwin's ideas are frequently distorted and used as labels for humans. And TV shows. But evolution isn’t as simple as ...
Cold, salty and promiscuous: Gene-shuffling microbes dominate Antarctica lake
Sequestered in Antarctica's Vestfold Hills, Deep Lake became isolated from the ocean 3,500 years ago by the Antarctic continent rising, ...
IVF: Where are all the stories of failure?
At the Alternative Parenting Show last weekend, the London Women's Clinic launched the nation's first egg bank. The headline controversy is that, for ...
Genetic study shows dangerous bacterim not spread in hospitals, as previously thought
Analysis of every C. diff infection in Oxfordshire for more than three years showed less than a fifth of cases had ...
DNA stories
What if personalized medicine never happens? What if the promised therapies tailored to our unique genomes just never materialize? Although ...
Uprooted: The dangers of DNA testing
As genetic database grow, they become increasingly more useful, but it also raises the looming specter of privacy concerns for ...
Gene therapy developers aiming for release in the US
Of the several gene therapies that have already advanced to human trials, one of them hopes to seek approval from ...
Programming genetic code can lead to better designer genes
Reprogramming bacteria to produce proteins for drugs, biofuels, and more, has long been part of the job for bioscientists, but ...
Italian court orders new DNA test in Knox retrial
Judges at the retrial of Amanda Knox for the murder of a British student on Monday ordered new DNA testing ...
Genetic matchmaking? Not all that far fetched
What if finding “The One” meant finding the person whose genome is most compatible with your own? That’s the question raised ...
