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.
One in 300 people is an identical twin. What can they teach us about human nature and genetics?
A podcast by two brothers and a film about two silent sisters give fresh impetus to the debate about biology ...
The air in our homes is making us sick. Here’s what we can do about it
The technology and the human knowledge necessary to improve indoor air exist. But despite decades’ worth of science linking dirty ...
What causes aging? AI analysis of humans, rats and fish reveals how genes influence lifespan
By using artificial intelligence to analyze data from a wide variety of tissues – collected from humans, mice, rats, and ...
Third human species? The story of a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother
Neanderthals are an extinct subspecies of humans that went extinct 40,000 years ago. Today, only 2% of Eurasians have Neanderthal ...
7 breakthrough technological innovations that may have flown under your radar this year
The release of several advanced generative AI systems was inarguably the biggest science and tech story of 2022 — DALL-E ...
Inside America’s STI crisis: 40% of pregnant mothers with syphilis lose their child, and the numbers are growing exponentially
Across the board, sexually transmitted infections are on a “shocking” upward trajectory, according to public health experts. Preliminary data from ...
Anti-vaxxers, COVID conspiracists, FOX’s Tucker Carlson and the far right link vaccines to NFL player Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest
Moments after Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field after making a tackle on 2 January, Covid-19 conspiracy theorists and right-wing personalities baselessly blamed ...
How do you metabolize medication and what is your risk of diseases? 150,000 volunteer study participants are gaining access to the results
Michelle Anderson recently learned her body metabolizes medicines more slowly than average. It was a small piece of information, but ...
Podcast: 200 years after the birth of father of genetics Gregor Mendel, scientists unearth his body and sequence his DNA
To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, a group of scientists decided ...
CRISPR and gene drives: Revolutionary tool to address pest control or potential weapon of mass destruction?
You’ve probably heard of the gene-editing tool CRISPR, often referred to as “word processing for DNA.” Much of the attention ...
Why do some drugs trigger a deadly brain disease? The answer is in our genetic code
Medicines that reshape or tamp down immune responses may be life-changing for patients with cancer and autoimmune disorders, but in ...
Evolution research: What were the top discoveries of 2022?
Telling us more about our food, our health, our close relatives and ancestors, and even our animal friends, these 14 ...
Post-Roe debate: New York Times addresses ‘when human life begins’
In the months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it has become unavoidable, as activists and politicians try to ...
Next gut health trend? You’ve heard of prebiotics — but what are postbiotics?
Postbiotics are the newest gut health trend promising to improve our skin, boost our strength and even reverse signs of ...
CRISPR gene editing could help cure as many as 7,000 diseases. What’s holding things up?
The parents of a 2-year-old girl write that their daughter “could die within the next year” because a genetic mutation ...
Safety concerns raised about Lecanemab, one of the first drugs to slow Alzheimer’s disease
The experimental drug lecanemab shows “potential” as an Alzheimer’s disease treatment, according to new Phase 3 trial results, but the ...
He Jiankui — CRISPR babies mastermind — is out of prison. What’s next for his career?
He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist who created the first gene-edited children, had been quiet since completing a three-year prison sentence in April, ...
Dinosaurs most likely lived near the North Pole. How did they survive?
It was the middle of winter under a moody Alaskan sky. On one side stretched the flat expanse of the ...
Super survivors: Some women outlive deadly ovarian cancer prognoses by more than a decade. Here’s why
A remarkable combination of genetic mutations in “exceptional survivors” of ovarian cancer could explain how these women outlived their deadly ...
Physicians rebuke threats against hospitals that offer resources for gender-affirming care
In what has become an increasingly frequent occurrence, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has had to issue ...
Our individual genetic makeups drive how we respond to a COVID infection
A striking characteristic of COVID‑19 is that the severity of clinical outcomes is remarkably variable. Establishing a prognosis for individuals ...
Minding the climate: How studying the brain can help us solve the world’s environmental crisis
Dr. Ann-Christine Duhaime is a pediatric neurosurgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She looks at brains. Over the course of ...
Viewpoint: Evolutionary theory is predicated on gender equality. Here’s why
Evolutionary theory is predicated on gender equality because parents have an equal genetic contribution to children. It is the only ...
GOP House house report claims possible link of COVID to China biological weapons
Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee are alleging in a newly released report that there are "indications" that COVID-19 could be ...
Single-dose CRISPR gene editing technology helps train patients’ immune systems to fight cancer
For the first time, researchers have used CRISPR technology to substitute genes in patients’ immune cells to treat cancer. Participants ...
What can teeth tell us about how human pregnancy evolved?
Human babies pack a lot of growth into those nine months between conception and birth to give them and their ...
Zimbabwe has just 19 psychiatrists for 15 million people. Here’s how they’re transforming mental health care — and what the US could learn from this paradigm
When psychiatry and other forms of professional mental health care are not accessible, people suffer in silence or turn to ...
