Genetics

Have you heard? A revolution has seized the scientific community. Within only a few years, research labs worldwide have adopted a new technology that facilitates making specific changes in the DNA of humans, other animals, and plants. Compared to…

Cane Toad on Grass. Image from SamFraser-Smith, National Wildlife Federation, www.nwf.orgA recent publication from Harvard scientists outlines the potential of a cutting-edge technology, CRISPR, to improve on an old technology called Gene Drives in order…

Mashed potatoes are Uncle Mike’s favorite food; at family dinners he would spoon mound after mound of them onto his plate long after everyone else was done eating. Many people seem to feel the same way about these creamy mountains of starch, but is it…

Presented by Yuly Fuentes-Medel Model organism systems amenable to genetic manipulation have made seminal contributions to many aspects of modern science. These organisms with small brains have inspired the discoveries of big ideas in such complex…

About two months ago we published a short report on a new study that pioneered creating an entire chromosome of yeast; an organism with similar cellular organization as humans. Just a week ago, a discussion flared up on Reddit about the consequences for…

How can we create a fully synthetic organism? One promising way to begin would be to take an existing organism and engineer a new set of chromosomes from that organism’s genome. Scientists at NYU have created a fully synthetic chromosome for…

Ever thought about keeping a wolf? Probably not… To understand how wolves evolved into modern dogs and started living with humans, researchers wanted to find out exactly where and when this happened. Using many samples from prehistoric and modern dogs…

Mitochondria provide the energy for cells, but unlike DNA, they are only inherited from our mothers through their eggs. Defective mitochondria cause diseases which are incurable in adulthood. However, they are treatable before conception with…

Figure 1 ~ Bacteria infecting your body continue to evolve as they reproduce. [Image credit: CDC/ Judith Noble-Wang, Ph.D. http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/details.asp?pid=8669]              Like most of the trillions of bacteria that surround us, growing on…

Who am I? This is a fundamental question that philosophers and anthropologists have been trying to answer for generations. With the discovery of DNA and the development of technologies to investigate genetic information, people have begun to probe the…