Genetic Literacy Project
How green are biofuels? Does corn-derived ethanol promote sustainability?
Tyler Lark, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, grew up among farms, working on a neighbor’s dairy, vaguely aware ...
Genomic surveillance: How studying malaria parasite genes helps develop more effective treatments
In a classic evolutionary ‘arms race’ between pathogens and their human hosts, both sides develop arsenals of weapons. Our immune ...
GLP Podcast & Video: Synthetic biology makes $10,000 perfume way cheaper; ‘Fashionable organic fantasies’ at the WEF; Sleeping pills cause dementia?
A bottle of perfume used to cost more than $10,000. The price has dropped precipitously thanks to advancements in synthetic ...
Regulatory inconsistency and the precautionary principle: Why the European Court ruling limiting neonicotinoid pesticide use is misguided
Important questions loom, now that European sugar beet and oilseed rape farmers face a potential ban on the use of ...
Viewpoint: The Guardian cites ‘shocking’ statistics from environmental lobby groups claiming increasing dangers from pesticide poisonings. Here’s why they are wrong, yet again
The evidence is quite clear at this point. Properly used, pesticides do not pose a serious risk to human health ...
Can we know for sure COVID’s origins? Why is Omicron so persistent? Knowing how evolution works provides guidance
The latest phrase borrowed from biology in COVID conversations is convergent evolution. It refers to pairs of unrelated species that ...
How cats got their stripes: The mystery of color patterns in mammals
In 1902’s Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling famously explained how the leopard got his spots in what would today be deemed an ...
Podcast and video: Fighting cystic fibrosis with viruses; Soaring seed prices; Europe’s byzantine plant-breeding rules persist
Cystic fibrosis is a fatal condition that claims patients at an early age, so why does it persist? Soaring seed ...
How biotechnology over-regulation harms farmers, boosts food costs and fuels inflation
Recent months have been hellish for many American farmers and consumers who buy the food they produce. Many farms have ...
With Kenya’s tentative embrace of growing GM products, Uganda faces a resurgent anti-GMO movement. Here’s the havoc it’s causing and the activists behind it
Agro-technologies, including CRISPR gene-editing to tweak crops to tolerate the challenges of climate change, including the control of plant bacterial ...
Using cost-benefit analysis: Crop biotechnology offers sizable yield and sustainability benefits when compared to non-GM farming
What are the costs of not adopting the best food producing technologies? The ability to quantify a choice that is ...
How humans adapt: Research on 1,000 ancient genomes reveals how genetic variants swept through populations
Humans may be just as vulnerable to environmental change as other animals, according to our new research analysing genetic data ...
Evoking Jeff Goldblum’s ‘The Fly’: Does growing human ‘brains-in-a-dish’ and creating chimeras cross a bioethical line?
Bits of human brain growing in a lab dish can reveal a great deal about how a disease begins and ...
Rethinking artificial sweeteners? Fake sugars may not cause cancer but they’re not great for losing weight either
Let’s start by noting that the World Health Organization (WHO) recently warned against using artificial sweeteners for weight control. What? ...
GLP podcast and video: Universities host anti-science quack Vandana Shiva (again); Communist Cuba is pro-GMO; 1 year of ‘bioengineered’ food labels
Dozens of researchers recently blasted two universities for inviting anti-vaccine, anti-GMO activist Vandana Shiva to speak. Why do America's academic ...
Viewpoint: What role should industry have in refashioning Europe’s food system?
I feel like Brussels is a puzzle where the pieces keep changing. The best way to start a puzzle is ...
Mysterious kidney disease epidemic flares up in Central America with climate change and chemicals suspected as drivers
José Lopez didn't want to die, but the alternative — having a scalpel plunged through his abdominal wall to install ...
8 billion milestone: Here’s the story of how Homo sapiens came to rule the earth
November 15 2022 marks a milestone for our species, as the global population hits 8 billion. Just 70 years ago, ...
Have any of Earth’s creatures stopped evolving?
Some of the planet's more bizarre creatures have prompted some observers to suggest that evolution, on occasion, is stopped in ...
GLP Podcast: Smoking, drinking fueled by genetics? Women more empathetic than men; Enthusiasm for HIV vaccine wanes
If you drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, a growing body of evidence suggests that your genetics may have predisposed you ...
It’s not just humans that get COVID — other animals are susceptible too
Humans aren't the only mammals susceptible to infection by, or testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. There have been instances among quite ...
The $100 genome: What breaking this accessibility barrier means for the future of genetic testing
In May 2022, Californian biotech Ultima Genomics announced that its UG 100 platform was capable of sequencing an entire human ...
GLP Facts and Fallacies Podcast and Video: ‘Industrial’ farming unsustainable? Junk science and academic freedom; Oxalate, the new dietary bogeyman
Are our current farming practices unsustainable? If so, how do we make them sustainable? Academic freedom enables researchers to pursue ...
What would happen if the male-determining Y chromosome continues to deteriorate and eventually disappears? The mole vole offers hope
The sex of human and other mammal babies is decided by a male-determining gene on the Y chromosome. But the ...
GLP Facts & Fallacies Podcast and Video: Curing ‘incurable’ leukemia? Cowardly corporations; Glyphosate hasn’t tainted school lunches
A new gene-editing technique known as base editing may have helped doctor's cure a young girls "incurable" cancer. Why are ...
‘The harder you push, the better you’ll perform’: Here’s how physical activity boosts your brain’s processing power
You have heard it before, but it’s now even clearer: Physical activity leads to improved performance at school, at least ...
Viewpoint: Could crop biotechnology mitigate dislocations from climate change? Anti-GMO activists say ‘no’. Here’s why they are wrong
We’ve heard a lot about climate change, and its impact on crops, especially in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the ...
Viewpoint: ‘The Dawn of Everything’ blurs lines between scientific research and political advocacy
In 1885, Thomas Henry Huxley delivered a speech in which he famously declared that science “commits suicide the moment it ...
