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.
British biotech company focuses on creating cellular factories
Imagine bacteria that eats pollution in water or can recycle gold from electronics -- the scope of synthetic biology is ...
Acid bath reverts adult cells to pluripotent state
A little stress is all it took to make new life from old. Adult cells have been given the potential ...
Questions about the 7000-year-old dark-skinned, blue-eyed hunter
On Jan 26, a paper in Nature detailed the results of sequencing a 7000-year-old skeleton of an ancient hunter-gatherer from ...
Pentagon speeding toward rapid DNA technology
Researchers are closing in on the final steps of a new system to analyze human DNA in 90 minutes instead ...
Fruit flies engineered to glow when they sense cancer
Fruit flies are able to distinguish breast cancer cells from healthy mammary tissue, according to a new study. The humble ...
Could genetic castes form in America?
Everyone's talking about a new paper that analyzes data about assortative mating -- the tendency of people to marry others ...
New era of fast genetic engineering
Sequencing genomes has become easy. Understanding them remains incredibly hard. While the trickle of sequence information has turned into a ...
Flying vertebrates have the smaller genomes
When the vertebrates fly, for some reason their genome reduces in size. Bats among mammals, birds and the extinct reptilian ...
One-fifth of Neanderthal genome persists in modern human genome
By piecing together the fragments of Neanderthal DNA in the modern genome, researchers found that the stocky hunter-gatherers gave us ...
Entrepreneur of next-gen gene therapy
If you’re in the business of drug discovery, you’ve got to be ready for the long haul. One recent study ...
Genetics gives hope of species-specific pesticides, minimal collateral damage
Imagine a future in which we no longer use pesticides. Instead, we use weevilicides or rootwormicides, targeted with exquisite precision ...
Spell-checking the genome to remove burden of bad genetic mutations
Eliminating mutational load might offer a shortcut to the Singularity. A person’s mutational load is the total burden of his ...
Anti-GMO groups don’t understand: GM Cheerios are as dangerous as GM insulin (not at all)
The recent decision of General Mills to produce GMO-free Cheerios is interesting from marketing, political, and biological angles. However, what ...
Old brains may be slow, but still smart
Modern memory tests are selling old brains short. It could be that older, wiser heads are so chock full of ...
Genetic drawbacks of having a manly face
Studying sex differences seldom gets boring. The Darwinian process of sexual selection, in which genes that improve an individual’s reproductive ...
FDA and 23andMe dance around evidence that isn’t there
On December 6, 2013, "the leading health and ancestry DNA service" rebranded itself as "the largest DNA ancestry service in ...
$1000 Genomes for $2000
Illumina claimed they can achieve the $1000 genome at the annual JP Morgan investor conference when they introduced their new ...
New technique separates modern contaminants from ancient DNA
The DNA of a Neanderthal found in a Siberian cave has been sequenced, thanks to a new technique that weeded ...
Using genetic techniques to target just one species of insect
Scientists and biotechnology companies are developing what could become the next powerful weapon in the war on pests — one ...
Ancient bacterial DNA suggest black death might not be gone for good
DNA analysis of the bacteria strains behind two black plague pandemics emerged, independently, from the black rat. That means another ...
Surprise: Ancient europeans had dark skin and blue eyes
Ancient Europeans may have been dark-skinned and blue-eyed (a combination rarely found in modern times) according to DNA from a ...
Number of home DNA testing kits in Britain doubled in last two years
Sales of DNA tests for everything from the risk of developing life-threatening diseases to catching out cheating partners are booming. The ...
Corporate DNA testing could put our genetic privacy at risk
There is another aspect of 23andMe’s business, one which has received less attention from the media (with the exception of ...
Neanderthal DNA linked to good health and bad
Scientists have found that Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted for tens of thousands of years in Europe and Asia and ...
Genetic determinism and social Darwinism are making a comeback
If you want to understand why humans wage wars, there is a gene for that. Want to understand why men ...
This may be the kickoff year for genetically-altered humans
By the middle of 2014, the possibility of altering DNA to produce a genetically-modified human could move from science fiction ...
Building a better baby
In 2014, BGI, a Chinese company, is hoping that it will soon be able to offer parents a similar option—choosing ...
