Kristen Brown
Nearly 500 Trump-voting US counties have less than 25% of their populations vaccinated, opening door to fall COVID revival
As much of the country emerges from masking and social distancing, undervaccinated pockets in the U.S. still threaten to bring ...
23andMe and weight loss: Can consumer DNA-testing company deliver?
Consumer DNA-testing giant 23andMe Inc. plans to add new wellness offerings it hopes will help its customers shed a few pounds, but ...
10 questions about consumer genetics tests
So-called direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies like 23andMe, Ancestry and Helix advertise the ability to reveal your ancestry, inform you of ...
This legal squabble is challenging the way we handle DNA ownership
Toronto businessman Harold Peerenboom and Marvel Entertainment chairman Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter were locked in an absurd suburban skirmish, bickering over ...
Viewpoint: I know my skin better than a ‘DNA-optimized’ skincare routine does
LifeDNA purports to take your DNA data from companies like 23andMe, and, relying on findings from “over 1,100 peer-reviewed studies,” ...
DNA health and and ancestry test for pets? Why would you want to do that?
The market for at-home DNA tests has exploded. Curious to find out about their ancestry, risk of disease, diet, and athletic ...
Death of controversial biohacker Aaron Traywick puts movement at ‘crossroads’
At just 28, [Aaron] Traywick was among the most infamous figures in the world of biohacking—the grandiose CEO of a ...
Writer agrees to be biohacked. Now she wonders if it was worth it
Grinders are hackers, but the hardware they aim to hack is the human body. They are transhumanist in the most ...
44 genetic variants linked to depression — and we may all carry some of them
Depression is a tricky beast. Symptoms vary widely from person to person, as does the response to treatment. But there’s no ...
The ambitious effort to sequence the DNA of earth’s 1.5 million animals, plants and fungi
In what will undoubtedly be the largest genomic sequencing effort of all time, an international consortium of researchers is organizing ...
Viewpoint: Precision medicine based on white populations could ‘reinforce existing societal and economic inequalities’
Sequencing the human genome has shown us that we are mostly all made up of the same stuff, but it’s ...
Men, women respond differently to genes linked to depression
In men and women diagnosed with major depressive disorder, the same genes show the opposite changes. In other words, the ...
Can Halo’s brain-zapping headsets improve athletic performance?
Equinox jumped at the chance to offer Halo Neuroscience’s brain-zapping, supposedly performance-enhancing headsets as part of its advanced personal training ...
23andMe adds 120 geographic regions to make genetic ancestry results more precise
If you’ve ever taken an ancestry DNA test, you probably already know that the results aren’t exactly precise. Sometimes you wind ...
Consumer genetics first: 23andMe gets OK to sell limited DNA test for cancer risk
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared 23andMe to sell directly to customers a DNA test for gene mutations ...
Big breakthrough? Man’s penis injected with stem cells at controversial clinic
Ben Greenfield is a cult figure among fitness fanatics, a guru to the sort of nerds who devote themselves to ...
Video: Watch DNA organization in real time
Your body is truly amazing. Every cell inside of it is capable of organizing massive messes of DNA into chromosomes ...
Quest to find ‘Olympic genes’ comes up short—so far
In 2014, the former Soviet nation of Uzbekistan announced a plan that it hoped would give it a leg up ...
Cutting through the ‘dieting din’: Your DNA won’t help you lose weight
Many consumer DNA testing companies have pledged to cut through the dieting din with personalized advice. Different diets work for ...
CRISPR ‘black box’ tells us what’s happening inside human cells
To get a peek inside the cell, scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a sort ...
‘Inherently imperfect’: Why ancestry tests are often misunderstood
It’s right there in the fine print of any consumer DNA test, if you bother to read it: DNA testing ...
DARPA: Biohackers should ‘think deeply’ about using themselves as research guinea pigs
[DARPA biotechnology director Justin] Sanchez was not only [at Body Hacking Con] to promote the agency’s expansive research portfolio. He ...
‘Genetic nurture’: Parents’ genes affect how they raise their children
A new paper [January 26] in Science suggests a fascinating new twist on this interaction between our genes and our environment. Our ...
Targeting invasive pests with genetically tailored poison in New Zealand
Recently, New Zealand has been at the center of a heated debate over whether it is either feasible or ethical to use ...
‘An awful lot of spit’: Consumer DNA test market booms as consumers ‘take control of their health’
When AncestryDNA sold some 1.5 million of its genetic testing kits over Black Friday weekend, it seemed like clear evidence that after ...
Should the FDA have a say in ‘do-it-yourself’ biohacking?
In the past few months, the possibility of do-it-yourself genetic engineering has exited the realm of the purely hypothetical. ...
CRISPR food coming soon: USDA decision speeds up regulatory process for gene-edited crops
In September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the green light to a version of the plant Camelina sativa, an important oilseed crop that ...
Can a genetic test tell you how to lose weight? 23andMe is trying to find out
23andMe is kicking off a massive study into the genetics of weight loss that the company says will involve 100,000 people crowdsourced ...