Scientist
Articles written for the GLP list the source as Genetic Literacy Project. All other articles were written for the sources noted with excerpts provided by the GLP.
Facing Ebola outbreak, Uganda approves 3 experimental treatments
Health authorities in Uganda have approved the use of three experimental treatments against Ebola in the country. The decision comes ...
Are we fighting diseases wrong? Researcher suggests a better approach is building tolerance to infection
[Researcher Janelle] Ayres was running the experiment to determine what causes genetically identical mice to respond differently to the same ...
Infographic: These supercomputers mimic human brains to boost computing power
Neuromorphic hardware takes a page from the architecture of animal nervous systems, relaying signals via spiking that is akin to ...
Video: See how the brain makes memories
Watch Princeton University’s Nicholas Turk-Browne describe his research on how the human brain makes, stores and adjusts memories. Read full, ...
Stem cell treatment could create ‘living drug’ against cancer tumors
In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, a natural killer cell immunotherapy derived from induced pluripotent stem cells is being tested for ...
Defining life: Why we need to identify the boundary between living things and AI robots
They’re advancing artificial intelligence (AI) to create next-gen personalized robots that can read human emotions in real time. What will ...
‘Reverse engineering’ our brains with silicon chips could help us understand consciousness
The fact that computers “think” very differently than our brains do actually gives them an advantage when it comes to ...
Building artificial brains to help us understand our own
You’d think that overseeing an entire issue of The Scientist focused on artificial intelligence would cause my mind to wander far into ...
Off-target RNA mutations: Why this ‘more precise genome-editing’ technique needs improvement
Base editors designed to convert one DNA nucleotide to another may also perform large numbers of unwanted edits to RNA, ...
Cancer has a male bias and we’re just starting to understand why
More than half of neurooncologist Josh Rubin’s pediatric brain cancer patients over his 25-year career have been boys. … About a ...
Monitoring biodiversity: Project seeks to catalog arctic life through ‘DNA Barcoding’
[Molecular biologist Inger Greye] Alsos is currently taking part in the formidable task of genetically identifying not just all the ...
When cancer becomes contagious: Seeking better understanding of rare transmissible forms of the disease
The untrained eye likely wouldn’t have noticed, but doctoral student Ruth Pye immediately spotted something unusual about the way the cells were ...
Can CAR-T cell therapy tackle solid tumors too?
Last summer, [Cecelia] Barron’s cancer went from stage 2 to stage 3 oligodendroglioma. Behnam Badie, her surgeon at City of Hope, ...
CRISPR’s challenge: It’s still easier to subtract genes than it is to add them
Almost always, building something is harder than tearing it down. Similarly, knocking in genes poses a greater challenge than knocking ...
How modern farming may be distorting our analysis of ancient human migration
One of the most widely used tools archaeologists have at their disposal to decipher where prehistoric humans lived and traveled ...
Searching for tuberculosis ‘super-spreaders’ by sampling breathed air
In Masiphumelele, an informal settlement of tin shacks, squat brick buildings, and narrow lanes south of Cape Town, 23,000 people ...
Japan wants to use stem cells to treat paralysis—but ethical questions remain
On February 18, 2019, The Asahi Shimbun reported, “Ministry [of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japan] OKs 1st iPS [induced pluripotent ...
Growing malaria drug resistance worldwide threatens to be ‘disastrous’
It’s not clear why, but the Greater Mekong Subregion—Cambodia, southern China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam—is a major source of ...
Calyxt gene-edited soybean oil debuts in Midwestern US restaurants
At the end of [February 2019], Calyxt, an agriculture-focused company based in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, announced its first sale of ...
Can the flu cause Parkinson’s and other brain disorders?
One of the earliest links between influenza and neural dysfunction was a correlation between the 1918 Spanish flu, caused by ...
Viewpoint: Creation of synthetic DNA demands ethical boundaries for its use
A study published [February 21] expands the redesign of the 4-billion-year-old genetic code from a four-nucleotide base-pair alphabet to an eight-base-pair ...
Popular autism ‘signaling imbalance theory’ challenged, suggesting new drugs ‘may have little value’
An analysis of four mouse models negates certain assumptions underlying the “signaling imbalance theory,” a popular hypothesis about autism’s origins ...
Keen sense of smell? You’re probably good at not getting lost, study suggests
Watch a bacterium chase down the source of an enticing molecular trail using chemo-taxis, and it’s clear that its sensory ...
First gene-editing experiments on adults suffering from rare metabolic disorders offer promising early results
In late 2017, scientists first began attempting to edit the genes of adults to treat rare genetic disorders. Preliminary results ...
Plant scientists: Anti-GMO activism has warped the public’s understanding of biotechnology
Public perception of genetically engineered (GE) crops is being manipulated by organizations that purport to represent the interests of consumers ...
Tracking Neanderthal DNA in modern humans: There’s been little change in 45,000 years
Neanderthals, modern humans’ closest evolutionary relatives, have been extinct for thousands of years. But due to interbreeding between the two ...
Infographic: How do urban environments drive genetic change?
Air pollution may favor the adaptation of organisms to become more stress-resistant than their rural counterparts. There is some evidence ...
Immunotherapy more effective in patients with more cancer mutations, study shows
The number of mutations in a tumor’s genome may predict how well a patient will benefit from treatment with immune ...
