Megan Molteni
Articles written specifically for the GLP or articles that are reposted from other sources (sometimes in modified form) by agreement or with permission list the source as Genetic Literacy Project. Excerpted articles posted in our Daily Digests are identified as excerpts of posts culled from the web. Each Daily Digest post lists the original media outlet as the source next to the name of the author. 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.
WHO restates opposition to gene-editing live human embryos but endorses other forms of genome modification
[July 12,] a World Health Organization advisory committee called on the world’s largest public health authority to stand by the ...
5 ways CRISPR has begun changing the world
[W]hile thousands of life scientists pivoted to trying to understand how the novel coronavirus wreaks havoc on the human body, and others transformed their ...
The human protein that might explain who’s most at risk from Covid-19
The earliest clinical data out of China showed that some [COVID-19 patients] consistently fared worse than others, notably men, the ...
On the front lines fighting the coronavirus: I took a COVID-19 contact tracing course
In the Before Times, there were only about 2,200 contact tracers for the whole US, according to the Association of ...
‘Microbe maps’: Swabbing subways, ATMs and park benches to find coronavirus hot spots
Nearly a decade ago, after watching his young daughter lick a pole in a subway car, computational biologist Christopher Mason ...
Predicting the next coronavirus outbreak by mining genetic databases
Search “coronavirus” on GenBank, a public repository for genomes, and today you’ll find more than 35,000 sequences. Alpaca coronaviruses. Hedgehog coronaviruses ...
3D-printed plastic bunny contains its own blueprint coded in synthetic DNA
The kumquat-sized bunny, cute as it may be, isn’t a toy or a good luck charm. But if you cut ...
How well-intentioned research into ‘gay genes’ spawned controversial DNA screening app
A giant collection of carefully cataloged genomes, called the UK Biobank, was about to become available to researchers. … To [researcher ...
Brazil plan to breed gene-edited dairy cattle on hold after bacterial DNA found in animal’s genome
Up until a few months ago, Brazil was all set to create the country’s first herd of genetically dehorned dairy ...
Calling for a halt to gene-edited babies, World Health Organization stops short of ‘all-out moratorium’
The world’s largest public health authority has weighed in with the most authoritative statement yet on the use of Crispr ...
Lone Star tick is notorious for making people allergic to red meat. It may also carry deadly Bourbon virus.
Scientists know almost nothing about how Bourbon virus behaves or how it got here or where it will show up ...
Congress considers allowing gene patents to keep pace with Chinese innovations
In 2013, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down patents on two human genes—BRCA1 and BRCA2—associated with breast and ovarian cancers ...
Boutique startups give fertility treatments a ‘luxury’ makeover
[There’s a] growing world of boutique egg-freezing operations Instagrammable enough for their majority-millennial clientele. Take Trellis, a “women’s fertility studio,” ...
How a genetically modified virus saved this teenager’s life
In October 2017, Graham Hatfull received an urgent email from across the pond. A microbiologist colleague ... was desperately looking ...
Can genetics help explain why some people make more money than others?
The UK Biobank is the single largest public genetic repository in the world... . But when David Hill, a statistical ...
Is there such a thing as too much prenatal genetic information?
[P]renatal whole-genome sequencing is [not] commercially available yet (though it’s definitely coming). But what is available is something called noninvasive ...
When birth control fails: Genetic mutation can make the pill less effective
For nearly 60 years, hormonal contraceptives have freed women from their own biology. ... But no form of hormonal birth control—pill, patch, ...
When targeting diseases, how worried should we be about CRISPR’s potential for gene-editing errors?
Of all the big, world-remaking bets on the genome-editing tool known as Crispr, perhaps none is more tantalizing than its ...
First clinical trials for controversial ‘3-parent’ fertility treatment begin
[A] 32-year-old Greek woman, who’d previously undergone two operations for endometriosis and four unsuccessful cycles of IVF, once again returned ...
Why genealogy tests will ‘send a lot more people to jail’ in 2019
In April [2018], a citizen scientist named Barbara Rae-Venter used a little-known genealogy website called GEDMatch to help investigators find a man ...
‘Human gene-editing scandal’: Should rogue scientist’s work be published?
How do you handle the data of a scientist who violates all the norms of his field? … On the one hand, you ...
Genome surgeons target genetic disease at the source
[Delaney Van Riper] was born with a rare genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth, or CMT, which is slowly eroding her nerve cells’ ...
Diagnosing rare infectious diseases with genetic sequencing
Early last spring, as flu season hit its peak, a woman checked into a Houston hospital with all the familiar ...
DNA testing boom drives demand for genetic counselors
[W]ith precision medicine going mainstream and an explosion of apps piping genetic insights to your phone from just a few teaspoons of spit, ...
Using CRISPR to build a ‘massive library’ of tools to cure genetic disease
In the past few years, [David] Liu’s become one of the most brightly-shining luminaries in the rapidly advancing field of gene ...
Will CRISPR gene editing disrupt or perpetuate global health and medical social inequalities?
On [June 3 and 4], hundreds of scientists, industry folk, and public health officials from all over the world filled ...
Ingestible digital pills use bioluminescent bacteria to sense stomach bleeding
Ingestible sensors—pill-sized electronics that ping your smartphone with data after you pop and swallow—have started to arrive on the market. They ...
ChatterBaby app wants to use artificial intelligence to diagnose autism through irregular baby cries
[B]y the time [Ariana] Anderson’s third kid came along, the UCLA computational neuropsychologist realized she had become fluent in baby ...
