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.
Infographic: 13 ways artificial intelligence will help us live to 100
We've long been searching for ways to extend the human lifespan, which currently sits around 79 years. Of course, there ...
Bioengineering’s ‘holy grail’: Scientists closer to creating printable skin to cover burns, other injuries
Creating a durable, natural-looking skin substitute to cover burn injuries or other wounds has been a bioengineer’s holy grail for decades ...
Artificial lungs grown in ‘hijacked’ mouse embryo could pave way for human transplants
Vaping aside, as dangerous air quality becomes increasingly prevalent in cities around the globe, the risk of serious lung disease ...
How the microbiome may boost the brain’s recovery from stroke damage
Despite a decades-long search, scientists have yet to pinpoint effective ways of protecting the brain from poststroke damage. In recent ...
Pregnancy, motherhood may give a boost to women’s brains, making them ‘younger’
Tired toddler mums may finally be able to take some comfort in their exhaustion. It turns out they may have ...
Universal ecology: Laws of physics and mathematics apply across the universe. Are there biological laws?
On Earth, bacteria grow exponentially, lynx eat hares, and red panda populations decline due to habitat loss and fragmentation. How ...
Feel foggy when sick? Mental sluggishness linked to inflammation
Researchers at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Human Brain Health in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam say they ...
‘Regulatory Wild West? DNA startups claim they can assess sexual preferences, depression risk, longevity and drinking proclivity
Genomelink is just one of a growing number of shady DNA testing startups now operating in the regulatory Wild West ...
What to make of ‘photographic proof’ of insect life on Mars? More than likely, they’re just rocks
William Romoser, a professor emeritus who specializes in arbovirology (the study of viruses transmitted by arthropods) and entomology at Ohio ...
Does the keto diet offer protection against the flu?
Mice fed a ketogenic diet—in which 90 percent of calories come from fat and less than 1 percent from carbohydrates—were ...
Infographic: Creating artificial human chromosomes
To convert a piece of cloned DNA into a centromere-containing human artificial chromosome (HAC), an array of repeated LacO sequences ...
How well-intentioned research into ‘gay genes’ spawned controversial DNA screening app
A giant collection of carefully cataloged genomes, called the UK Biobank, was about to become available to researchers. … To [researcher ...
‘Peculiar brain waves’ during sleep may be key to forming memories, study suggests
Neuroscientists have always presumed that learning and memory depend on strengthening or weakening the connection points between neurons (synapses), increasing ...
Why do women make up two-thirds of Alzheimer’s patients? The answer may be found in menopause
Two-thirds of all Alzheimer’s patients are women. Why? It has often been posited that this is because women live longer ...
5 common myths about testosterone debunked
Many of the claims go well beyond or even directly against the scientific evidence about what scientists call “T.” Myth ...
‘Magnetic skin’ turns your body into a remote control, opening doors and controlling lights with a wave of the hand
A Saudi research team has developed a ‘magnetic skin’ that can open a door or control a switch remotely with ...
Is it time to decide what we want our future gene-edited society to look like?
Now, we are able to ‘design’ babies, filtering out illnesses, and selecting things like eye colour, hair colour, and even ...
Staving off dementia through lifestyle changes, including exercise, weight loss
When it comes to battling dementia, the unfortunate news is this: Medications have proven ineffective at curing or stopping the ...
CRISPR therapy demonstrates ‘real curative potential’ for sickle cell disease, beta thalassemia
The first two patients to receive a CRISPR-based treatment for the inherited blood disorders sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia ...
Psychiatric diagnoses scientifically meaningless? Why that criticism ‘seems meaningless’
In this opinion piece, psychiatrist Samei Huda responds to a recent journal article published in Psychiatry Research that labeled psychiatric ...
Trio of gene therapies seeks to reverse age-related diseases to make us ‘healthy, youthful later in life’
The legendary synthetic biologist Dr. George Church and team at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University took a first step towards ...
Can we take AI to the next level by building robots that fear for their own safety?
There might be a way, though, to give robots feelings, say neuroscientists Kingson Man and Antonio Damasio. Simply build the ...
Can meditation, hypnosis treat epilepsy and other brain disorders?
Understanding more about how consciousness works could help us find treatments when things go wrong. Dr Prisca Bauer from the ...
Sleep disturbances may make you susceptible to anxiety disorders
Studies in healthy human volunteers have shown how a sleepless night can increase anxiety levels by 30%. In some participants ...
We may need to genetically engineer astronauts to protect them from radiation during long space flights
One of the main health concerns with space travel is radiation exposure. If, for example, scientists could figure out a way ...
Campaign in France to loosen ban on direct-to-consumer DNA testing gains traction
The French ban on direct-to-consumer genetic testing is part of the country’s bioethics laws, which legislators are supposed to revise every ...
How old is your dog in human years? This calculator promises more accurate estimate, using epigenetics
Our Scotch collie, Buckaroo, is just shy of 14 years old. Following the long-debunked but still popular idea that one ...
