As fun as it is to find out where your great-great-great grandparents came from, the real promise of genetic testing is in the realm of disease. By screening for the genetic markers associated with hereditary disease, people can make proactive, potentially even life-saving decisions about their health. That is, as…
In the classic 1966 American science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, a submarine crew was miniaturized and injected into a body to fix a blood clot in the brain. That’s obviously not how future medical science is going to work, but the notion of creating microscopic machines to perform complex tasks is certainly on…
On Wednesday morning, Copenhagen police confirmed that a torso found by a cyclist was a DNA match for the missing journalist Kim Wall. Wall had been missing since August 10th and was last seen on board the DIY submarine built by eccentric inventor Peter Madsen. Earlier this week, Madsen admitted to police that Wall…
It’s just you and your mates in a hotel, braving the dark and the cold, sealed off from the outside world. But you soon find it hard to breathe. The oxygen levels are dropping, and you just don’t know why.
Dogs have loved us for thousands of years, despite humanity’s many flaws and foibles. New research suggests dogs were domesticated from wolves just once—that’s all it might have taken for puppers and people to form an everlasting alliance.
What’s a strand of DNA but data? We often think of its units, the As, Cs, Ts, and Gs, as letters of the words in an instruction manual. But what if, instead, we think of them as biological computer bits, storing the smallest unit of information? What stops scientists from harnessing the power of those units, using the…
A Spanish judge just ordered the body of Salvador Dalí to be exhumed for a paternity test. The order comes as a result of a lawsuit filed by a woman named Pilar Abel, a tarot card reader who claims to be Dalí’s illegitimate daughter. In court, Abel claimed that her mother was working near the Dalí family’s vacation…
As companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com help make genetic testing commonplace, you would think that we would become better at ensuring protections for the privacy of that data. Instead, multiple Congressional actions threaten to erode already-weak protections against genetic discrimination. But it’s not just a…
In the not-so-distant future, next time you want to back up your work to Microsoft’s cloud, you might be storing it on a few snippets of DNA.
It’s a nightmare scenario straight out of a primetime drama: a child-seeking couple visits a fertility clinic to try their luck with in-vitro fertilization, only to wind up accidentally impregnated by the wrong sperm.
Embedded in our genetic code is all kinds of sensitive data that could be compromising in the wrong hands. Without genetic privacy protections, the information stored in our genes might be used to discriminate against us or send us targeted ads. For these reasons, some have said we should skip out on consumer DNA…
At times, DNA testing can feel more like horoscopes than science. In many cases, we just don’t know enough about a gene to say what it means for our health. For this reason, the Food and Drug Administration has sought to protect consumers by preventing DNA testing companies from telling them whether or not they’re…
UFOs. Big Foot. The Loch Ness monster. All mythologies that have propagated to explain the unexplained, the things modern science can’t quite justify or illuminate.
Nearly a decade ago, Dallas police proposed a new program designed to get sex workers off the streets. Rather than just send them to jail, police would set up shop at truck stops, accompanied by counselors, social workers and nurses, and give the sex workers a choice of either prison or talking to a counselor. But…
While we all want to travel, live, and bang in space, there are some pretty major things to consider, such as the fact that our sentient flesh cocoons were not designed to handle the harsh conditions of the cosmic void. Though research like NASA’s Twin Study will illuminate some of the potential impacts of extended…
Ten years ago, if you wanted to back up some old photos, you might have stored them on a big, clunky external hard drive that weighed a couple of pounds and was a pain to lug around. Ten years from now, you might back up all the data from your entire life on just a few grams of DNA.
As individuals, our DNA offers insight into things like our personalities, our health and where we come from. But taken together, all those individual portraits can add up to paint a detailed history of humankind.
Diagnosing disease often requires analyzing and detecting single cells with lab tests that cost hundreds of dollars each. Hospitals in a poor country stricken with a disease epidemic like HIV or malaria simply might not have the funds to run all of those tests. Scientists are looking for a cheaper option.
They haven’t found alien life out there yet, but following the first successful in-space DNA sequencing, astronauts have a better way to look for it.
The ISS is getting an incredible new tool: a handheld DNA sequencer. The questions scientists hope it will answer include whether life exists beyond our planet and just what is that weird fungus growing on the wall of the space station?
