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.
Getting older isn’t always bad for brains
For years, conventional wisdom held that growing older tends to be bad news for brains. Past behavioral data largely pointed ...
How many scents can a person smell? 10 to one trillion
Earlier this year, a paper in Science attempted to answer the question: how many smells can we actually smell? At ...
Ethics issue aside, freezing human eggs may be dangerous
When news broke several weeks ago that tech giants Apple and Facebook were offering female employees elective egg freezing benefits, ...
Computer model replicates complex networks behind evolution
You inhabit something of a miracle, in engineering terms. Your body consists of trillions of cells, woven together into something ...
Low oxygen on Earth delayed evolution of early animal life
Animals were slow to evolve on Earth. While the first life forms emerged about a billion and a half years ago, ...
Stem cells in breast milk might persist throughout life
Breast milk may provide longer-term benefits than previously thought, extending even into adulthood. A study at the University of Western Australia found ...
Telomerator tool paves way for “designer” medicines, nutrients and biofuels
A new synthetic biology tool called "the telomerator" could boost the engineering of an organism's genetic, chemical base-pair structure ...
Gene patents pose challenge to doctors treating genetic disorders
In Canada, doctors are challenging legally-held patents on genes. The Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario has taken the case to ...
Is increase in ADHD an artifact of our modern educational system?
One in ten American children will be treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD at some point in their ...
Moving forward in the search for ‘autism genes’
Autism researchers have recently made important strides in figuring out the genetic underpinnings of the disorder. Some results are somewhat discouraging, ...
Should have asked Hamlet: Study finding Danish genes foster happiness needs some work
Why a study alleging Danes are happiest and French most grumpy because of their respective gene pool is not worth ...
Biosimilar biotech for medicines can help people and save money
The reality of biotechnology is that in order for novel new drugs to get cheap, they first have to be ...
Targeted antibiotic treatments–What’s on the horizon?
New research is uncovering ways of modifying bacterial enzymes to make future antibiotics more specific - and thus less likely ...
Preventing antibiotic resistance: Bacterial-toxin catcher snatches lethal infections
Antibiotic resistance has become a hot topic. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria kill some 50,000 in the U.S. and Europe each year but little ...
What is a ‘healthy’ microbiome?
The microbiome is one of the hottest current topics in biology. According to various studies, our gut microbial community may ...
Human genes can replace animal models in ‘knockout’ studies
Scientists are proposing new method of researching genetic disease, which was discussed at the recent American Society of Human Genetics ...
Gene editing advances raise hopes for hemophilia cure
In a scientifically-based future, researchers will be able to tailor the cure to the patient using genetic modification - by ...
Genetic ‘treasure’ in saliva could spot disease early
Researchers have created a simple saliva test capable of diagnosing diabetes and cancer, and perhaps neurological disorders and autoimmune diseases, at ...
Susceptibility to Ebola has clear genetic underpinnings
Ebola patients show markedly different reactions to the virus. Some survive exposure; others die quickly, while still others experience hemorrhages ...
Biology of politics: Brain scans can identify your political beliefs?
A new study has entered the debate on whether our political beliefs are acquired through logic and reasoning, or if they ...
Genetic “hall of mirrors” with large palindromes, yet smaller: What’s mighty about the mouse
Human Y has been described as a genetic "hall of mirrors" riddled with several regions of large palindromes. Believe it ...
Genetic study shows this natural plant causes kidney cancer
A new study on the genetics of a large cohort of kidney cancer patients in Europe finds that exposure to ...
Designer babies: You can screen for cystic fibrosis but intelligence is a ways off
Using a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, it’s possible to screen embryos for disease and sex before they are implanted ...
More than 100 genes newly implicated in autism
Scientists have identified more than 100 genes that appear to play a part in causing autism. Two new studies, the ...
Hardship during pregnancy has long-lasting effects on child
A lot can happen to a woman during pregnancy that impact the child prenatally, and these residual effects may persist long after ...
Lab-grown miniature organs pave way for research on stomach disease
For the first time, scientists have made lab-grown stomachs in a petri dish. The feat was accomplished at the Cincinnati ...
Spontaneous mutations and the genetic mysteries of autism
At least 30% of all autism cases is caused by spontaneous, or de novo, mutations. Lends new weight to hypothesis ...
