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.
We may have a CRISPR cure for red blood diseases sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia
Sickle cell anemia and thalassemia are genetic diseases that result in the production of anomalous hemoglobin (protein that carries oxygen) ...
Humans and chimpanzees share 99% of the same DNA. This is the 1% difference
With only 1% difference, the human and chimpanzee protein-coding genomes are remarkably similar. Understanding the biological features that make us ...
100+ countries have outlined legal restrictions on editing human embryos. Here’s a guide
Discussions and debates about the governance of human germline and heritable genome editing should be informed by a clear and ...
Crash effort to develop coronavirus vaccines has revolutionized disease treatment
The COVID-19 experience will almost certainly change the future of vaccine science, says Dan Barouch, director of the Center for ...
Video: How the unique immune system of prehistoric-like jawless lamprey fish may unlock cures for brain diseases
You might expect to find these fish at the core of an ancient, distant asteroid, but we find them instead ...
Neanderthals, COVID-19 and you: Exploring how our inherited genes are harming us and could have decimated our hominid ancestors
[Researchers Svante] Pääbo and colleague Hugo Zeberg announced that the major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals… By ...
How RNA-based vaccines will revolutionize medicine and disease treatments
The two vaccine candidates produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are unlike any other vaccine that’s come before. Should they achieve ...
Nature’s mistake? Meet the ‘world’s ugliest orchid’
[A new species], Gastrodia agnicellus, was discovered earlier this year in the deep shade underneath leaves on the forest floor in Madagascar ...
How do physiological processes produce a conscious state of mind?
I believe there are two reasons why we have failed to solve the hard part of the problem [of consciousness] ...
How dangerous is a lack of sleep?
Whether sleep deprivation can kill is somewhat debatable. That’s because people who forgo sleep for extended periods of time may ...
When did modern humans emerge? 350,000-year-old tool discovered in Israel may challenge date for debut of Homo sapiens
Archaeologists believe they've found the oldest known tool used for grinding or scraping, dating back some 350,000 years. Found in ...
Advanced cancers in humans linked to rogue evolutionary mutation
Compared to chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary cousins, humans are particularly prone to developing advanced carcinomas — the type of tumors ...
Dream engineering: Virtual reality and brain stimulation yield surprising insight into the brain
[Adam] Haar Horowitz is one of a small but growing group of researchers who call themselves dream engineers and are ...
Neuroscientist Catherine Dulac challenges misperceptions about ‘male’ and ‘female’ instincts
Though she is trained as a developmental biologist, [Catherine] Dulac takes her research into territory usually explored by social scientists ...
Where does my body begin and machine end? How AI is keeping my pancreas, and me, alive
I have Type 1 diabetes, so my pancreas does not produce the life-essential insulin that a normal pancreas secretes. Instead, ...
How our genes shape our facial features
"The face tells the outside world about your identity, who you are related to, where your ancestors come from and ...
When did pre-modern humans begin using fire?
Circumstantial evidence suggests that archaic humans’ ability to cook food and consume more calories may have played a pivotal role ...
New evidence of e-cigarette dangers: Vapor liquid linked to chronic gut inflammation
It is still early days for research into the long-term effects of e-cigarette use. Cursory studies are discovering e-cigarettes can potentially cause some ...
Help for future burn victims? Electronic ‘replacement skin’ can feel touch and temperature
The challenge for electronic skin, being developed for use in artificial skins or humanlike robots like the humanoids, is to ...
18 months later, first sickle cell patient treated with CRISPR is still pain free
[35-year-old Victoria] Gray is the first person in the United States to be successfully treated for a genetic disorder, [sickle ...
10 top dinosaur discoveries of 2020
As we anticipate what the fossil record might reveal in 2021, here’s a look back at ten dinosaur discoveries that ...
How the brain compares the present to the past to notice changes in our environments
Imagine you are sitting on the couch in your living room reading. You do it almost every night. But then, ...
‘The Pattern Seekers’: What autism can tell us about the evolutionary tipping point that made us human
[In “The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention,” psychologist Simon] Baron-Cohen argues that humans split off from all other ...
Humanoid robots should nicely fit in with the rest of us, study suggests
Previous surveys have been able to shed light on people's perceptions of social robots and their characteristics, but the very ...
What explains ‘home court advantage’ in sports? NBA ‘bubble’ provides some clues
The weirdly truncated pro basketball season of 2019-20 afforded a prime opportunity for a natural experiment. After halting its season ...
How nature evolved blue tigers and other quirks of ‘neutral theory’
As late as the 1950s, hunters reported spotting their blue hairs alongside the traditional orange fur of other South China ...
Immunotherapy offers hope for once nearly-untreatable cancers
Though scientists have explored immunotherapy for more than 100 years, only recently has it been taken seriously, said James Allison, chair ...
