What’s the likelihood of developing universal broad spectrum coronavirus vaccine?

What’s the likelihood of developing universal broad spectrum coronavirus vaccine?

Medscape | 
Individual researchers from eclectic fields are finding new ways to prevent future pandemics. Artem Babaian, PhD, a computational biologist at ...
Sandy From the Mountains dies from COVID-19, leaving a message to the unvaxxed

Sandy From the Mountains dies from COVID-19, leaving a message to the unvaxxed

Sandy and her husband lived in a cabin nestled into a mountainside in a small town in the Rockies, next ...
How Watson and Crick predicted the origin of Omicron and laid the groundwork for COVID-19 vaccines

How Watson and Crick predicted the origin of Omicron and laid the groundwork for COVID-19 vaccines

Genetic Literacy Project | 
The tantalizing final sentence to James Watson and Francis Crick’s landmark 1953 paper in Nature introducing the genetic material, DNA, ...
Two years after Wuhan: Why Omicron is a ‘blindsiding riptide’

Two years after Wuhan: Why Omicron is a ‘blindsiding riptide’

Genetic Literacy Project | 
Next Tuesday, December 21, marks two years since the China CDC Weekly acknowledged the first “cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown ...
Regrowing limbs using CRISPR? It’s been done with lizards, with hopes that human limb regeneration will be possible in the future

Regrowing limbs using CRISPR? It’s been done with lizards, with hopes that human limb regeneration will be possible in the future

Genetic Literacy Project | 
I’ve admired the cockroach’s ability to regrow lost legs since learning about them while working on my PhD in developmental ...
A lucky segment of the population is genetically immune to the COVID virus. What can we learn from them?

A lucky segment of the population is genetically immune to the COVID virus. What can we learn from them?

Genetic Literacy Project | 
In March 2020, Eleanor A. had been sick for several days. Thinking it might be the new respiratory illness going ...
Viewpoint: Does mounting evidence for vaccine “durability” suggest we delay boosters for all until we learn more?

Viewpoint: Does mounting evidence for vaccine “durability” suggest we delay boosters for all until we learn more?

Genetic Literacy Project | 
When President Biden announced that beginning the week of September 20, “anyone vaccinated on or before January 20 will be ...
dt nasal spray x

How snake venom and a smoking cessation drug inspired a nasal spray that blocks COVID

Genetic Literacy Project | 
A simple nasal spray that stops SARS-CoV-2 in its tracks? That could block the coronavirus in the nose, before it ...
Why the COVID-19 coronavirus continues to surprise us

Why the COVID-19 coronavirus continues to surprise us

Genetic Literacy Project | 
As people in the US grapple with a return to masking to stay ahead of the delta and lambda variants ...
Hulu’s Rosemary's Baby redux ‘False Positive’ bungles the science and stretches credulity

Hulu’s Rosemary’s Baby redux ‘False Positive’ bungles the science and stretches credulity

Genetic Literacy Project | 
I looked forward to Hulu’s original horror film False Positive, pitched as a modern-day Rosemary’s Baby. It premiered at the Tribeca ...
Is Prevagen the 'silver bullet' supplement to treat Alzheimer’s disease? Distinguishing hope from hype in the battle against cognitive decline

Is Prevagen the ‘silver bullet’ supplement to treat Alzheimer’s disease? Distinguishing hope from hype in the battle against cognitive decline

Genetic Literacy Project | 
The avalanche of TV ads for Prevagen that coincided with my reaching Medicare age has inspired me to investigate what’s ...
What our embattled world looks like through the ‘eyes’ of SARS-CoV-2

What our embattled world looks like through the ‘eyes’ of SARS-CoV-2

Genetic Literacy Project | 
I’m tired of writing about COVID from a geneticist’s point of view, so I thought I’d let a virus speak ...
Incurable Huntington’s disease? microRNA offers hope in the wake of failed clinical trials

Incurable Huntington’s disease? microRNA offers hope in the wake of failed clinical trials

Genetic Literacy Project | 
A recent DNA Science post considered the ebb and flow of treatment possibilities for Alzheimer’s disease. This week, it’s Huntington’s disease. Like ...
Good and bad news: What we know about vaccines and containing COVID variants

Good and bad news: What we know about vaccines and containing COVID variants

Genetic Literacy Project | 
Glimmers of hope are beginning to shine through the gloom of the past year. That was evident in a recent ...
The age of genetically-enhanced children is approaching. Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro imagines a have-and-have not future, and it’s not pleasant

The age of genetically-enhanced children is approaching. Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro imagines a have-and-have not future, and it’s not pleasant

Genetic Literacy Project | 
Biotech interventions to help sick children—like gene therapy—are approached with supreme caution. If a treatment has a reasonable chance of ...
Debating the possible origins of COVID-19: A lab-escaped bioweapon? Animal poop? Random mutations of an existing virus?

Debating the possible origins of COVID-19: A lab-escaped bioweapon? Animal poop? Random mutations of an existing virus?

Genetic Literacy Project | 
“Virus outbreak: research says COVID-19 likely synthetic,” shouted the headline in the Taipei Times on February 23, 2020. The idea ...
Would you agree to be infected with COVID for science? Intentional 'challenge' studies underway as researchers explore new vaccines and treatments

Would you agree to be infected with COVID for science? Intentional ‘challenge’ studies underway as researchers explore new vaccines and treatments

Genetic Literacy Project | 
Lauren Thomas, who just turned 26, is trying to get into a clinical trial at the University of Oxford, where ...
Anxious about getting a COVID vaccine because you don't know what's in it? We know a lot more about it than the safety of hot dogs

Anxious about getting a COVID vaccine because you don’t know what’s in it? We know a lot more about it than the safety of hot dogs

Genetic Literacy Project | 
“So, you’ve been eatin’ hot dogs and chicken nuggets all your life and you don’t want the vaccine ‘cuz you ...
Mosquito massacre: Can we safely tackle malaria with a CRISPR gene drive?

Mosquito massacre: Can we safely tackle malaria with a CRISPR gene drive?

Genetic Literacy Project | 
CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing quickly decimated two caged populations of malaria-bearing mosquitoes (Anopheles gambiae) in a recent study, introducing a new ...
When the faster-spreading and more virulent COVID-19 mutant came to my home town, it shook up everyone. Here's an explainer of what it foreshadows

When the faster-spreading and more virulent COVID-19 mutant came to my home town, it shook up everyone. Here’s an explainer of what it foreshadows

Genetic Literacy Project | 
When a new variant of the COVID-19 virus appeared in the UK as 2020 drew to a close, I didn’t ...
A dangerous stage in the evolution of the novel coronavirus is upon us with the discovery of "escape mutations". Artificial intelligence may be our best response

A dangerous stage in the evolution of the novel coronavirus is upon us with the discovery of “escape mutations”. Artificial intelligence may be our best response

Genetic Literacy Project | 
Real life with COVID-19 is now scarier than anything a sci-fi writer could envision. So-called “escape mutations” that can turn ...
Marketers are beginning to use data mined from consumer DNA tests. Should we be worried?

Marketers are beginning to use data mined from consumer DNA tests. Should we be worried?

A woman lingers at a display of coffeemakers. Soon after, images of the very same contraptions festoon her Facebook feed, ...
Do you want to eat turkey or be the turkey: Reflect on this before you host a large gathering for Thanksgiving

Do you want to eat turkey or be the turkey: Reflect on this before you host a large gathering for Thanksgiving

My blog posts around Thanksgiving are predictably dull: Turkey Genetics 101, The Peaceable Genomes of Pumpkins. But 2020 is like no ...
ynews dna genome covid

When it comes to COVID, nurture trumps nature – so far

Genetic Literacy Project | 
In the early weeks of the pandemic, as patients overwhelmed New York City hospitals, the clinical characteristics of the most ...
f medium

Final weeks to approval: NIH’s Anthony Fauci and FDA’s Peter Marks on what’s ahead before we can expect a safe COVID vaccine

Genetic Literacy Project | 
As tens of thousands of people participate in phase 3 clinical trials on COVID-19 vaccine candidates, the focus is turning ...
coronavirus vaccine bottles

Infographic: 5 different ways COVID vaccines work

Genetic Literacy Project | 
COVID vaccine hesitancy is on the rise, perhaps in the wake of pressure to speed approval beyond scientific reason. But I think ...
jewish

How anti-Semitism shaped the genes of Jewish people

Genetic Literacy Project | 
Evidence of past outrages is not only in the history books. It's also written in our genomes ...
beijing grants ad ncov patent the first such covid vaccine in china

‘Challenge studies’: Should we be testing COVID vaccines by intentionally infecting volunteers?

Genetic Literacy Project | 
To those who’ve never thought about volunteering to be intentionally infected to test a vaccine, the idea may at first ...
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