Meredith Knight
Controversial fetal cell transplants revived for Parkinson’s trials
Fetal brain cell transplants fell out of favor as a potential therapy for Parkinson’s disease after mixed reviews from trials ...
DIY fecal transplant: Taking love of the microbiome a bit too far
Anthropologist Jeff Leach ended his last trip to Africa with a bit of self-experimentation. He gave himself a fecal transplant ...
Personal genomics company says it will solve puzzle of Welsh origins
A British genetics company is asking for Welsh participants to help discover the mysterious genetic origins of the famously redheaded ...
Do mysterious ‘jumping genes’ fast track evolution?
Genomes have a lot of moving parts. Some stretches of DNA try to assimilate and copy themselves in novel places, ...
Intelligence genes: Elusive but real
The question of the degree to which genes control intelligence has been so controversial that many geneticists avoid pursuing it ...
Persistence of the massive microbiome myth
Scientists and layman alike have long touted the estimate that microbial cells outnumber humans by 10 to 1. While that ...
Apes R’ Us: Online misogynists wrongly hide behind the veil of ‘human nature’
As celebrity nudes were leaked online, hackers and their supporters justified the behavior by claiming that men are hardwired to ...
Stem cells: Stalled promises
Fifteen years ago, stem cell therapies captivated the public’s perception of emerging medical treatments and offered the promise of replacing ...
Advanced cancer screenings find early, slow growing cancers more often than fast aggressive ones
As cancer screenings grow more sophisticated, the chances of finding small, slow growing cancers has increased rapidly, at great cost ...
Live to be 100+? Extreme longevity research is futuristic privatized enterprise
When longevity research is privately funded, what happens when the money runs dry? ...
Evolution do-over might lead to the same place
Scientists have often wondered if evolution happened all over again, what would life on earth look like? A Harvard biologist ...
Call it what it is: Mitochondrial replacement does not a three-parent baby make
Mitochandrial replacement offers hope to families debilitated by disease. But opponents stoke fear of public by dumbing down the science ...
New IVF technique may cut multiple births, complications
Although IVF has been used for decades and is considered very safe, the procedure does increase pregnancy risks because it ...
Genetics of intelligence: many, many genes with tiny effects
The explanation of the inheritance of intelligence has long been studied, but without any blockbuster results. A new study adds ...
Who owns your DNA? It’s not who you think
Recent court cases show the law favors hospitals and law enforcement rather than individuals when it comes to handing genomic ...
Beyond family history: Should all women be screened for BRCA breast cancer genes?
New evidence shows that women without a family history of breast cancer often carry disease-causing mutations in BRCA 1 and ...
Genghis Khan and the role of power, wealth and behavior in human genetic ancestry
Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan marked 16 million males as his progeny after he conquered Eurasia with his sons and brothers ...
Genetic short cuts: Horizontal gene transfer
Some plants rely on specialized bacterial backup to help them synthesize nutrients. Instead of evolving these traits over and over ...
Humans’ love for simple stories and status quo make opinions intractable in face of fact
Popular opinions about complex issues in science and technology are often held to even when facts and experts are presented ...
Parasite practices genetic mind control to spread infection
Toxoplasma gondii, the parasitic infection that may infect almost half the worlds human population uses some special trick to control ...
Brain, behavior and genetics
The link between our genetics and how we behave is the topic of much speculation, some if it highly controversial ...
Personal genomics: Care to update your haplogroup status page?
Personalized genomics offers the opportunity to revolutionize medical care and our understanding of disease. But many first adopters won’t wait ...
Can open-source strategy help synbio avoid controversial fate of GMOs?
It’s not the use of recombinant technology, but rather capitalism and greed that has stigmatized genetic engineering in our culture ...
Beyond autopsies: Using post-mortem brain scans to understand stroke, head injury and death
Besides their ability to lie completely still in MRI scanners, making them excellent patients, corpses have a lot of offer ...
Ten years in, first trial treatment from California’s stem cell initiative approved
It’s been ten years since California voters approved their state-funded stem cell initiative. Critics have charged that the initiative as ...
Diet wars: ‘Caveman diet’ is all the rage, but ignores what our ancient ancestors really ate
Before the advances that made agriculture possible, humans ate solely what they could hunt and gather, which varied wildly depending ...
23andMe moves to mend fences with FDA, seeks Bloom syndrome test approval
Seven months after the FDA forced 23andMe to stop reporting health results to its customers, the personal genomics company is ...
More details on Google’s Baseline human health project
Google X’s new Baseline Project was made public in July. Although widely reported that the study would only focus on ...