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.
Communicating in the age of disinformation: Four patterns of anti-science thinking and how to challenge them
The same four factors that explain how people change their beliefs on a variety of issues can account for the ...
‘70% of human eggs have the wrong number of chromosomes’: Here’s why so many people struggle with fertility
About half of fertilised eggs die very early on, before a mother even knows she is pregnant. Tragically, many of ...
The gene-edited CRISPR twins are growing up — raising questions about the ethics of continuing to study them
More than a billion people live in China, but researchers in the country have proposed the creation of a healthcare ...
Wuhan market COVID-19 origins theory reaffirmed in two new papers; lab leak viewed as ‘possible’ but not ‘plausible’
The coronavirus pandemic began in separate viral spillovers — at least two but perhaps as many as two dozen — ...
With global smallpox vaccine supplies in short supply, monkeypox may no longer be containable
It has been a mere nine weeks since the United Kingdom announced it had detected four cases of monkeypox, a ...
CRISPR may not always be safe: Study finds gene editing can damage genome and in extreme cases cause cancer
Scientists at Tel Aviv University (TAU) warn that while the CRISPR genome-editing method is very effective, it is not always safe and ...
Vitamin B6 shown effective in treating depression and anxiety
Taking high-dose Vitamin B6 tablets has been shown to reduce feelings of anxiety and depression by new research. Scientists at ...
How one CRISPR-tweaked gene could permanently lower cholesterol
A volunteer in New Zealand has become the first person to undergo DNA editing in order to lower their blood ...
‘Electric hearing’: This alternative to cochlear implants literally shines a light on malfunctioning neurons that cause deafness
For 15 years, my team at the University of Göttingen, in Germany, has been collaborating with colleagues at the University ...
Updating the ‘serotonin hypothesis’: Mental illness is way more complex than a chemical imbalance
Almost as soon as it was floated in 1965 by Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Schildkraut, the serotonin hypothesis of depression—reduced and ...
With monkeypox now an international public health emergency, what do you need to know?
The World Health Organization has declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, but it's not a disease ...
Humans are mutts: New discoveries upend long-held views of evolution
Among human species, analysis of alternative types has been confined to Neanderthals and Denisovans, so far. And we have discovered ...
What are the genetic origins of the 5 senses?
Researchers from the University of Innsbruck have determined the genetic origin of our senses. The findings reveal that vertebrate cranial ...
Managing grief: How science can help guide end of life discussions with children
Children may not ask questions indicative of an existential crisis. They often ask very practical questions: What happens after we ...
Life on Earth is carbon-based — but on other planets, could life be built out on other chemical building blocks, like silicon?
When we search for life on other planets, what we usually mean is that we are looking for life as ...
If Artificial Intelligence bots reflect the biases of their creators, will some turn out to be racist?
In a new study, a robot operating on CLIP was asked to sort blocks with human faces on them and ...
‘They are perfect’: Why cats have remained virtually unchanged through centuries of domestication
The biggest-ever genetic analysis of cats is in, and it’s official: they are cats. After two centuries of breeding, cats ...
‘AI muscle shirt’: Sensors used to create ‘wearable muscles’ to help those with upper limb impairments
Swiss researchers have developed “wearable muscles” that use sensors and AI to help people with upper-limb impairments use their arms ...
Viewpoint: Groupthink — How the COVID pandemic made scientists into politicians, with equally loyal followers
Now that we are returning to political and social normalcy, we must recognize how we succumbed to an unseemly creeping ...
Are anxious parents unconsciously ‘teaching’ their kids to be stressed out?
Children were more likely to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder when a parent of the same sex, rather than ...
Viewpoint: Shining future promised by gene therapy blocked by researchers who refuse to share data
Transparency in gene therapy research — which can be accomplished without compromising commercial prospects — is vital to success. One ...
Hungry after spending time in the summer sun? Male hormones could be the cause
Summer sunshine can leave us feeling hot, sweaty and a bit burnt – but it may also make men hungrier, ...
How fatty diets wreak havoc on body, brain and heart
An international study led by UniSA neuroscientists Professor Xin-Fu Zhou and Associate Professor Larisa Bobrovskaya has established a clear link ...
Humans live well beyond the reproductive phase of life — unlike many other animals. Why?
According to long-standing canon in evolutionary biology, natural selection is cruelly selfish, favoring traits that help promote reproductive success. This ...
Natural solution for litter? Maybe worms can solve our Styrofoam problem
Don’t toss out that Styrofoam takeout container quite yet: what’s trash for you could be food for plastic-gobbling “superworms”. Researchers ...
3-D printed breast implants? This alternative to silicon regrows breast tissue and degrades without a trace
Every year, 2 million people worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer. Most choose not to have their breasts reconstructed; in ...
Why the US is ill prepared if monkeypox escalates into a pandemic
As if dealing with continued waves of Covid-19 isn’t enough, the U.S. is facing a new outbreak — monkeypox — ...
