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.
Many people carry severe disease genes that should be deadly — but they survive and are healthy. How?
The result didn’t make sense. The researcher kept scanning the mouse’s pregnant belly, back and forth, back and forth. They ...
Free genetic tests? Beware of telemarketer scams promising that Medicare will pay for health screens
Medicare beneficiaries are being targeted by unscrupulous telemarketers, door-to-door salesmen, and seemingly helpful people manning the booth at a local ...
1 out of every 3,000 people: Simple and now inexpensive whole genome test could diagnose risks of developing neurological disorders
A simple test could end years of uncertainty for people with relatively common neurological conditions, new research has found. Historically, ...
What are the genetic causes of autism? The brain is difficult to study but gene-edited organoids open avenues for research
Hundreds of genes have been linked to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a complicated range of conditions affecting the behavior, social ...
Is there an ‘exercise gene’? Scientists believe CRISPR guided gene therapy could help curb muscle loss in elderly people
“Many millions of elderly people worldwide suffer from sarcopenia, a disease that is characterized by muscle wasting. A large proportion ...
Genetic genealogy leads to unexpected — and sometimes destabilizing — revelations
Genetic genealogy has become a popular hobby over the past several years, thanks to direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing and relative-finder ...
Can we tell the difference between a real human face and an artificially generated one? Nope — and the AI ones are more trustworthy
From synthesizing speech in anyone’s voice to synthesizing an image of a fictional person and swapping one person’s identity with another ...
1 in 7 breast cancer diagnoses are false alarms. How should that affect your decision to get a mammogram?
Catching cancer early in a mammogram can be life-saving — smaller tumors are easier to remove surgically, and therapy often ...
DishBrains: Half-living, half-machine neurons learn to play Pong
On December 3, 2021 the Australian biological computing startup, Cortical Labs, released a pre-print article stating that it had turned ...
Happy anniversary CRISPR: Transformative gene editing technology is 10 years old. What’s next?
2022 marks 10 years since the initial publications characterizing Cas9 as a programmable RNA-guided endonuclease. These findings have led to ...
Is stuttering a psychological or biological condition?
For centuries, people have feared being judged for stuttering, a condition often misunderstood as a psychological problem caused by things ...
Dog Aging Project: Multi-year sequencing of tens of thousands of dogs to find clues to longevity
How old is your dog in human years? And what factors contribute to a long and healthy life for a ...
Viewpoint: Here’s why you should be concerned about nanoplastics
Tire particles from the world’s billions of cars, trucks, bikes, tractors, and other vehicles escape into air, soil, and water ...
We are entering the era of AI biological robots. How can we harness this powerful innovation so it doesn’t control us?
It should come as little surprise that pioneering work in biological robotics is as controversial as it is exciting. Take ...
What happens in our brains when we die?
Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain and discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns around the time of ...
Why art and music therapy appear to ease brain disorders, from Parkinson’s to PTSD
Arts therapies are increasingly being used to treat brain conditions including PTSD, depression, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. But most of these ...
Video and infographic: Most comprehensive family tree ever retraces history of humanity
A new, enormous family tree for all of humanity attempts to summarize how all humans alive today relate both to ...
Christianity and ‘race science’: UCLA’S Terrence Keel examines the religious roots of scientific racism
Terence Keel is an associate professor with a joint appointment in the African American studies department and the UCLA Institute ...
Women who experienced both sexual assault and workplace harassment have 21% increased risk of hypertension, study finds
Women who experience sexual violence, workplace sexual harassment or both have a higher long-term risk of developing high blood pressure ...
How CRISPR gene editing might soon protect us against Alzheimer’s
The challenge: There is evidence that Alzheimer’s may be developing in the brain as much as 30 years before symptoms ...
Re-thinking evolution: If we ‘evolved from apes’, why do they still exist?
In 2017, actor-comedian Tim Allen famously tweeted a question that revealed just how little he understands about evolution. It seems ...
Why ‘better looking’ people may be genetically programmed to be healthier as well
An extensive new study has found evidence that links physical attractiveness to the functioning of the immune system. While there ...
Did White Europeans evolve separately from the rest of the world? A new book examines the racist allure of this pseudoscientific hypothesis
The model of evolution developed by Charles Darwin increasingly gained traction, bringing about a revolution in scientific thinking. It was now ...
Slow mental decline begins in your 20s? New evidence suggests brains don’t slow down until after 60
It is widely accepted as one of life’s bleak but unavoidable facts: as we get older, our brains get slower ...
From sex to drugs to alcohol to gambling, addiction ruins lives. This new book ‘The Urge’ offers insights and hope
Our culture, ever on the lookout for easy, unambiguous answers to the predicament of being flawed and often unhappy humans, ...
Depression found to play causal role in Alzheimer’s disease development
Epidemiological data have long linked depression with Alzheimer's disease (AD), a neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive dementia that affects nearly ...
How DNA analysis uncovered the illegal elephant ivory trade
As few as three major criminal groups are responsible for smuggling the vast majority of elephant ivory tusks out of ...
