Nearly two decades after researchers assembled the first genetic blueprint for human life, our understanding of our instruction manual has a dramatic and problematic bias: It’s based primarily on white…
Category: Genetics
‘Origin’ explores the controversial science of the first Americans
OriginJennifer RaffTwelve, $30 Scientific understanding of the peopling of the Americas is as unsettled as the Western Hemisphere once was. Skeletal remains, cultural artifacts such as stone tools and, increasingly,…
Scientists vacuumed animal DNA out of thin air for the first time
On a dreary winter day in December of 2020, ecologist Elizabeth Clare strolled through the Hamerton Zoo Park in England wielding a small vacuum pump. She paused outside of animal…
A genetic analysis hints at why COVID-19 can mess with smell
For many people, one of the fastest tip-offs that they have COVID-19 is the loss of taste or smell. Now researchers have pinpointed some genetic variants in people that may…
Drug-resistant bacteria evolved on hedgehogs long before the use of antibiotics
Beneath the prickly spines of European hedgehogs, a microbial standoff may have bred a dangerous drug-resistant pathogen long before the era of antibiotic use in humans. It’s no question that…
50 years ago, scientists were genetically modifying mosquitoes
Sterility gene for mosquito control — Science News, December 18, 1971 Scientists are working hard to find a substitute for DDT in the control of malaria vector mosquitoes.… Two experiments…
A bacteria-virus arms race could lead to a new way to treat shigellosis
When some bacteria manage to escape being killed by a virus, the microbes end up hamstringing themselves. And that could be useful in the fight to treat infections. The bacterium…
2021 research reinforced that mating across groups drove human evolution
Evidence that cross-continental Stone Age networking events powered human evolution ramped up in 2021. A long-standing argument that Homo sapiens originated in East Africa before moving elsewhere and replacing Eurasian…
Gut bacteria let vulture bees eat rotting flesh without getting sick
Mention foraging bees and most people will picture insects flitting from flower to flower in search of nectar. But in the jungles of Central and South America, “vulture bees” have…
‘Life as We Made It’ charts the past and future of genetic tinkering
Life as We Made ItBeth ShapiroBasic Books, $30 With genetic engineering, humans have recently unleashed a surreal fantasia: pigs that excrete less environment-polluting phosphorus, ducklings hatched from chicken eggs, beagles…
