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.
Viewpoint: Human ‘evolutionary changes’ inevitable from pandemics
We all know that viruses are living organisms that can evolve and change, but did you also know that they ...
Massive genetic analysis shows how our ancestors ‘diversified, migrated and mixed’ around the world
A new study has provided the most comprehensive analysis of human genetic diversity to date, after the sequencing of 929 ...
Specialized ‘event’ cells help your brain keep all your memories organized, study suggests
Our recollection of events is usually not like a replay of digital video from a security camera—a passive observation that ...
Can the human body survive a trip to Mars unharmed? New study casts doubt on safety of long-term space travel
Extended periods in space have long been known to cause vision problems in astronauts. Now a new study in the ...
Microbiome could be key to better blood sugar control
Researchers from the Weizmann Institute in Israel analyzed the gut microbiome of 800 people. They also hooked these folks up ...
Searching for ‘animal zero’ and the origins of the coronavirus outbreak
The COVID-19 pandemic that’s currently ravaging the world started with a simple virus in an animal. Viruses like this, which ...
Can you get reinfected? 2% of recovered coronavirus patients in South Korea test positive for the disease
In South Korea, health officials are trying to solve a mystery: why 163 people who recovered from coronavirus have retested ...
Curing sickle-cell disease with a more accurate CRISPR technique?
For many serious diseases, the statistics tell just half the story. Sickle-cell disease (SCD) is no exception. Yes, we can ...
Cytokine storms: How your own body fights against you during a coronavirus infection
When the body first encounters a virus or a bacterium, the immune system ramps up and begins to fight the ...
While you sleep, your brain decides which memories to keep, and which ones go to ‘the garbage bin’
We don’t remember every detail of our lives: Our brains decide which events are important for long-term storage and which ...
Video: What are the chances that Moderna’s experimental coronavirus vaccine will work?
A vaccine for COVID-19 has entered Phase 1 of clinical trials in Seattle. How was it made? And how likely ...
New York’s coronavirus outbreak traced to travelers who arrived from Europe in February before travel ban was imposed
New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first ...
‘It’s the only strategy’: Coronavirus pandemic cannot end without herd immunity
For weeks, the most pressing policy challenge has been relieving the life-and-death pressure on our hospitals. But all that justifiable ...
What’s real? Why ‘false memories’ are trouble for police, juries and judges
In 2015, memory researcher and psychologist Julia Shaw and her co-author published a study on false memories. Over the course ...
Infographic: From vaccines to drugs, chasing ‘silver bullets’ targeting the fast-moving coronavirus
For drug companies, there is suddenly only one priority: the coronavirus. More than 140 experimental drug treatments and vaccines for ...
Exercise as a weapon against cancer: 150 minutes a week could double survival chances
Evidence is accumulating that exercise improves the wellbeing of these patients by combating the physical and mental deterioration that often ...
‘Colossal Maybes’: Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine ‘largely failed’ to improve coronavirus patient survival rates in early, small studies
The malaria drugs touted by President Trump as potentially “the biggest game changers in the history of medicine” have received ...
‘It’s a cacophony’: Quest for coronavirus treatments undermined by ‘disorganized and scattershot’ US approach
In a desperate bid to find treatments for people sickened by the coronavirus, doctors and drug companies have launched more ...
Did COVID-19 escape from a lab?
A frenzy of speculation has arisen around the idea that the novel coronavirus responsible for the global COVID-19 pandemic might ...
Making the case for a ‘semi-aquatic’ phase in human evolution
For the past 150 years, scientists and laypeople alike have accepted a “savanna” scenario of human evolution. The theory, primarily ...
What is it about the coronavirus genome that makes it so dangerous?
In January, scientists deciphered a piece of very bad news: the genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The ...
‘Like trying to hit a moving target’: Why it’s so difficult to attack cancer with targeted gene therapies
We are, it seems, still a long way off from a cure, in any ordinary sense of the term. Yet ...
These 2 ‘crucial and very different’ tests could help us contain the coronavirus
Amidst a slew of shortages and logistical hurdles, American researchers are now slowly rolling out two crucial and very different ...
160 new coronavirus-fighting drug and vaccine candidates in development
While President Trump continues to promote antimalarial drugs such as hydroxychloroquine sulfate and azithromycin to treat COVID-19 ... the global ...
Children born more than 3 weeks premature may develop language problems
[R]esearchers have looked at the language development of preterm children – both those born three weeks early and those born ...
Saliva-based test for coronavirus gets emergency FDA approval
There are now more options for COVID-19 testing as the US Food and Drug Administration gave emergency use authorization on ...
Mysterious African skull could be part of undiscovered ‘ghost population’
A mysterious but well-preserved hominid skull found nearly a century ago comes from a population that lived in Africa around ...
