Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News
Articles written specifically for the GLP or the articles that are reposted from other sources (sometimes in modified form) with permission list the source as Genetic Literacy Project. Excerpted articles list the original media outlet as the source. Excerpts are posted under guidelines for Fair Use and Creative Commons for educational nonprofits (501c3). The GLP’s Fair Use policy for posting excerpts and using images is explained here.

Just 7 years old, CRISPR gene editing is making food more nutritious and battling COVID
Just seven years ago, the Broad Institute’s Feng Zhang, PhD, and Harvard geneticist George Church, PhD, separately demonstrated that in ...

Top 60 coronavirus treatments in the research pipeline
Anthony Fauci, MD, Director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), offered hope to the thousands ...

CRISPR, disease-sensing technologies could yield a ‘cornucopia’ of healthier, tastier foods
Consumers may soon begin purchasing fun-sized fruits and vegetables, as well as processed foods that incorporate healthier ingredients .... And ...

GMO houseplant traps carcinogenic chemicals that home air filters miss
[M]ost of us like to keep the air in our homes as clean as possible and we often go to ...

Humans may have more genes than we thought—and why it matters
Estimates for the number of genes in the human genome have been trending downward, from 50,000–100,000 (a figure widely cited ...

Colds and other infections may trigger mutation that causes Parkinson’s
Scientists report that the most common Parkinson's gene mutation may change how immune cells react to generic infections like colds, ...

Correlation study of 71 Indiana women suggests glyphosate in urine may be linked to shorter pregnancies
In what they claim is the first prospective birth cohort study of its kind, U.S. researchers have linked likely environmental ...

FDA puts clinical hold on Solid Biosciences’ gene therapy trial for Duchenne muscular dystrophy over toxicity concerns
The FDA has imposed a full clinical hold on Solid Biosciences’ Phase I/II trial for its lead candidate, the Duchenne ...

Melanoma mystery: Obese men undergoing immune-therapy survive longer than those with normal weight
Obese men with metastatic melanoma who are treated using targeted or immuno-therapies survive for more than twice as long as ...

FDA details risk-based cellular therapy and regenerative medicine guidelines
The FDA has issued two final guidances and two draft guidances, all designed to articulate the agency’s approach to developing ...

How epigenetics is linked to drug resistance
Scientists at Vanderbilt University say they have discovered a nongenetic cause of resistance to cetuximab, a therapeutic that is used ...

Big data meets CRISPR: ‘Cloud biology’ platform could speed up gene editing crop improvement
Benson Hill Biosystems, an agricultural technology company, reports the launch of Edit, which is powered by CropOS™, a computational platform ...

GMO soybean oil causes less obesity in mice than conventional oil
Long-term tests in mice indicate that a genetically modified (GM) brand of soybean oil causes less obesity and insulin resistance ...

Genetic cancer screenings based on family history may not go far enough
Simultaneous sequencing of tumor DNA and normal tissue for a broad panel of cancer-related genes may detect more potentially clinically ...

Why don’t two people with the same illness suffer equally? It’s genetic
Ever wonder why your friend, co-worker, or partner doesn’t get as sick as you, even though they caught the same ...

Sunburn savior? High doses of vitamin D may jumpstart skin repair
Anyone who has ever had bad sunburn understands the agonizing discomfort associated with too much sun exposure and would probably ...

Reversing Huntington’s? Brain shown to heal itself after disease source edited out — in mice
The potential of genome-editing techniques, such as CRISPR/Cas9, to alleviate disease burden has ignited the imagination for thousands of researchers ...

Patients with ALS, other neurological disorders look to gene-silencing drug for hope
Two recent mouse studies, led by investigators at the University of Utah and Stanford University, describe how a new antisense ...

Tiny CRISPR-Cas9 injections could treat retinal diseases, with no off-target effects
Scientists at the Center for Genome Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Korea, in collaboration with ToolGen, ...

Personality genes correlate with psychiatric disorders
Nature vs. nurture has been a long-standing argument between the fields of biology and psychology. However...investigators have identified six loci ...
Scientists discover virus that steals CRISPR machinery from bacteria
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Viruses have often been ...
Genes point to potential treatments for digestive diseases
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Scientists at the University ...

If not anti-science, what’s in the heads and hearts of GMO opponents?
For years, supporters and opponents of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) have debated questions ranging from the safety of engineered crops, to ...
Sexual reproduction is good for the human genome
Theories on the genetic advantages of sexual reproduction abound within the biological sciences community, but there has been scant evidence ...
Light-activated genes in bacteria engineered with CRISPR-Cas9
Scientists may have taken a step closer to making science fiction a medical reality. Researchers at Duke University have developed ...
Hormone therapeutics boosted by unique cow antibodies
The friendly cow, said to be blown by all the winds that pass, and wet with all the showers, may ...
How oncologists sort through masses of genetic data
Whether they are concerned with a mutation of a single gene, or mutations in a combination of two or more ...
More potential health benefits found from drinking red wine
Researchers at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine report that a compound found in common foods such as ...