andme toc

Viewpoint: Consumer DNA tests promise more than they can deliver

John Loike | The Scientist | 
Over the past few years, many [DNA testing companies] have branched out into the realm of precision health, treading into ...
fungal

GAANTRY: USDA develops ‘gene-stacking’ solution to fungal pathogens—but will it actually work?

Anne Connor | The Scientist | 
If climate change is the new normal, farmers in some regions of the world will have to get used to ...
Aging graciously intercepting falls

Are age-related diseases the result of evolutionary tradeoffs favoring the young?

Sukanya Charuchandra | The Scientist | 
While granting human species some advantages over our primate cousins, recent genomic adaptations appear to have come at a cost ...
x

Does sunshine make us smarter? UV exposure boosts mouse brainpower

Ruth Williams | The Scientist | 
The sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a major cause of skin cancer, but it offers some health benefits too, such ...
patient

Using patient registries to track effectiveness of cell and gene therapy trials

Anna Azvolinsky | The Scientist | 
Due to advances in rare-disease research and individualized cell and gene therapies, there has been a recent crop of treatments ...
a be e b f

What a headache: Genetic adaptation to cold weather also gave us migraines

Viviane Callier | The Scientist | 
A human genetic variant in a gene involved in sensing cold temperatures became more common when early humans migrated out of ...
evewkellys

Gene therapy research gets boost from parent-led crowdfunding

The Scientist | 
It’s a compelling narrative: A parent learns that his or her child has a fatal disease with no cure, and, ...
Screen Shot at AM

What can we learn from bacteria that eat antibiotics for fuel?

Shawna Williams | The Scientist | 
Some bacteria take antibiotic resistance a step further: they chow down on the very compounds designed to kill microbes and ...
vaccine

How we can make vaccines more effective in newborns

Theo van den Broek | The Scientist | 
The immune system is known for its ability to remember its response to pathogens, leading to more efficient clearance of ...
FISH Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery

Hatchery-raised vs wild-born coho salmon: Containment sites may alter epigenome, hurting survival in the wild

Shawna Williams | The Scientist | 
[Biologist Louis Bernatchez of Quebec’s Laval University] and his colleagues set out to search for evidence of a different kind of hatchery adaptation, ...
index

Bee-friendly pesticides? Protein discovery could lead to less toxic neonicotinoid insecticides

Catherine Offord | The Scientist | 
[S]tudies have shown that not all the compounds are equally toxic to [honeybees], suggesting that there might be variation in ...
lw gene

Decades-old immunosuppressant drug rapamycin could extend life

Anne Connor | The Scientist | 
In the 1990s, pharmacologist Dave Sharp of the University of Texas’s Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies in San ...
jenner jpg

Are brains of transgender people wired differently?

Shawna Williams | The Scientist | 
In recent years, US society has seen a sea change in the perception of transgender people, with celebrities such as ...
cotton herbicide spray enlist

Is there a difference in the toxic effects of glyphosate versus herbicides like Roundup that include surfactants?

Katarina Zimmer | The Scientist | 
Glyphosate is rarely used on its own in the field. Herbicide formulations as a whole include a variety of other ...
rodolfo solis banana plant roots

Advances in crop microbiome research could revolutionize agriculture

Davide Bulgarelli | The Scientist | 
Editor's note: Davide Bulgarelli is a principal investigator at the University of Dundee in the UK. His research aims at understanding the ...
are mice blind feature

Autism researchers focus on ‘retired’ line of mice with missing gene

Jessica Wright | The Scientist | 
Nearly 20 years ago, a new strain of mice debuted in a California laboratory. The mice were missing a gene ...
woman sniffing armpit

Hot stuff: Do human pheromones really exist?

Diana Kwon | The Scientist | 
Some companies, such as the Athena Institute, which, according to its founder, Winnifred Cutler, published its 108th consecutive ad in The Atlantic this month, ...
imagesCA BPY E e

‘Personal omics’: Weight changes affect what’s happening in our gut, disease susceptibility

Abby Olena | The Scientist | 
Gaining and losing weight causes extensive changes in the gut microbiota and in biomarkers related to inflammation and heart disease, ...
unioni civili

Gay genes identified? Research met with ‘severe criticism’

Jef Akst | The Scientist | 
Scanning the genomes of 1,077 homosexual men and 1,231 heterosexual men, researchers identified several genetic regions with multiple single nucleotide ...
allergies

Fighting infectious diseases with immunotherapy on ‘cusp of commercialization’

Lucas Laursen | The Scientist | 
Immunotherapy, which involves adapting immune cells to destroy specific cellular targets, has made a name for itself treating cancer. But ...
How to Train for High Altitude Hiking

Getting behind the genetics of high-altitude adjustments

Abby Olena | The Scientist | 
People who both travel to and live at high altitudes typically cope with lower oxygen levels by increasing red blood ...
iStock LARGE

100 billion neurons make up our brain—how does it all work?

[Editor's note: Sara Linker and Tracy Bedrosian are postdoctoral research fellows in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute for ...
download

Life-forming water droplets could have jump-started early evolution

Ashley Yeager | The Scientist | 
Reactions in tiny droplets of water may have given rise to some of the molecules essential for the origin of ...
The chimera of a quantum ‘solution’ to the problem of free will

Seeking human consciousness at the cellular level

Anna Azvolinsky | The Scientist | 
To define human consciousness at the neuronal level is among the most difficult of tasks for neuroscience. Still, researchers have ...
Morning exercise on an empty stomach should you do it or not e

Evidence confirms likely link between regular exercise and reduced cancer risk

Jef Akst | The Scientist | 
Researchers have long recognized an epidemiological link between exercise and a lower risk of certain cancers, including breast cancer. But ...
yamauchi HR e

Genome destruction: CRISPR used to remove entire Y chromosome in mice

Kerry Grens | The Scientist | 
Researchers have managed to wipe out an entire mouse chromosome using CRISPR-Cas9. They aimed numerous double-strand breaks at either the ...
mri

Human ‘tree rings’? Neuroimaging predicts life span and brain age

Diana Kwon | The Scientist | 
In recent years, scientists have plumbed the molecular depths of the body and surfaced with tell-tale biomarkers of aging, some ...
D A E EDD B source

Not fool-proof: Gene drive’s greatest weakness is random DNA mutations

Kerry Grens | The Scientist | 
Gene drive is a technology that could squelch insect-borne diseases, by forcing deleterious traits engineered into the animals’ DNA to ...
glp menu logo outlined

Newsletter Subscription

* indicates required
Email Lists