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.
‘Strange’ twist for viral version of Parkinson’s: It may take decades for disease symptoms to appear
In recent years, a mysterious surge of a Parkinson’s-like disorder spread around the world, causing an estimated 10-15% of the ten million worldwide ...
How did early humans avoid being wiped out by tuberculosis?
Tuberculosis is responsible for as many as one billion deaths in the last 200 years alone, but its murderous history ...
Sex-linked mutations point to need for closer look at causes of autism in women, study suggests
Autism may stem from a different — and larger — set of genetic mutations in women than it does in ...
Genetic mutation blamed for mysterious heart condition killing young members of Amish community
[D]octors at the Mayo Clinic say they’ve uncovered the cause of a mysterious heart condition that had suddenly killed over ...
Can we add ‘cooking’ to the list of things that drove human evolution?
Theories about the driving forces of evolutionary differentiation that separated us from our ape relatives are not lacking. Toolmaking, predisposition to ...
Age isn’t the thing that saps our memories: ‘Experiencing new things is the best way to keep the mind young’
Twenty-year-olds don’t think, “Oh dear, this must be early-onset Alzheimer’s.” They think, “I’ve got a lot on my plate right ...
Video: Building a bionic prosthetic leg that ‘thinks for itself’
It’s no question that researchers, doctors, and engineers want to design more effective robotic limbs that can help paralyzed and ...
Exposure to different types of dirt may boost body’s immune system, study suggests
Differences in allergy incidence between the two sides of the Finnish-Russian border might have something to do with exposure to ...
Past decade taught us how wrong we were about human evolution, including when our ancestors left Africa
In recent years, anthropologists around the world have discovered new human ancestors, figured out what happened to the Neanderthals, and pushed ...
Are we getting closer to understanding how our brains make memories?
How do memories work? That has been a burning question for over a century, since Richard Semon introduced the term ...
Gene therapy offers hope for untreatable CTE brain disorder
[Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College] published a new study (“Anti-Phospho-Tau Gene Therapy for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy”) in Human Gene Therapy that ...
Collecting DNA samples from migrant detainees opens door to enhanced government surveillance
[T]he United States government will begin collecting DNA samples from thousands of people detained by immigration officials, including minors, and ...
Virus used to deliver gene therapy treatments may increase liver cancer risk, study suggests
Just as gene therapy finally seems to be living up to its promise, a study has revived a lingering worry ...
Can a DNA test determine if your biological age matches your chronological age?
I consider myself to be a fairly healthy person, to my own standards at least. But does my DNA tell ...
Viewpoint: In the face a gene-editing revolution, President Trump should push for moratorium on human germline editing
In the face of the rapid development of the most powerful technologies ever invented — CRISPR germline gene editing, “artificial ...
Deeper understanding of our ‘sense of touch’ could lead to better prostheses
Imagine you’re holding a pen by the tip-side in between your thumb and index finger. You close your eyes and ...
‘Chicken or the egg’? We need to rethink our understanding of Alzheimer’s progression, study suggests
To the non-scientist, the argument of what came first, the chicken or the egg may seem a bit esoteric. Yet ...
Do genetics determine our political beliefs? Why twin studies may not be able to answer the question
In the late 1960s, researchers began to consider the interaction between genes and environment as a possible basis for all ...
Podcast: How old is your dog in human years? Genetic study offers a new way to answer that question
How old is your four-legged best friend? Common wisdom says that a dog ages seven years for every human year ...
‘Chilling’ solution to Fermi paradox: Are intelligent life forms destined to destroy themselves?
If we compress the history of the universe into a single year, Earth and our solar system formed around Labor ...
Neuroscience had a ‘transformative’ decade, giving us brain-computer interfaces, new research tools
I rarely use the words transformative or breakthrough for neuroscience findings. The brain is complex, noisy, chaotic, and often unpredictable ...
DNA to be collected from migrants in custody through Trump administration pilot program
The Trump administration will begin collecting DNA samples from some migrants in US Customs and Border Protection custody as part ...
Protein tangles may help predict where and how Alzheimer’s will strike the brain
Tangles of a protein found inside the brain cells of people with Alzheimer’s disease can be used to predict future ...
‘Almost no limit’: Synthetic biology has turned the stuff of science fiction into the stuff of science
Synthetic biology, or the application of engineering principles to the design of life, presents world-changing prospects. Could components of a ...
Genetic analysis reshapes our understanding of when humans first arrived in North America
For more than half a century, the prevailing story of how the first humans came to the Americas went like ...
Why it’s so difficult for human embryos to survive CRISPR gene editing
CRISPR may one day wipe out devastating genetic diseases throughout entire family lines, or even the human race. But to ...
‘Connecticut vampire’s’ identity revealed through genetic analysis of remains
Back in 1990, children playing near a gravel pit in Griswold, Connecticut, stumbled across a pair of skulls that had broken ...
