What Mormon Family Trees Tell Us About Cancer
By searching the church's famed family trees, scientists have tracked down a cancer-causing mutation that came west with a pioneer couple—just in time to save the lives of their great-great-great-great grandchildren.
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Mark Lennihan / AP The Surgeon Who Experimented on Slaves
Fellow doctors have been some of the most prominent defenders of J. Marion Sims, the controversial “father of gynecology.”
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Richard Levine / Corbis / Getty Images All of the World's Yeast Probably Originated in China
Baker’s yeast, brewer’s yeast, yeast that lives in infected toenails—they all descended from a common ancestor.
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UCLA Health The Twice-Transplanted Kidney
“Few kidneys would be good enough” for this rare surgery.
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The Atlantic The ‘g’ in Google’s Old Logo Is Really Weird
A tale of two “g”s
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Ted Horowitz / Getty Can Lost Embryos Give Rise to a Wrongful-Death Suit?
An Ohio couple wants their embryos that were destroyed in a fertility-clinic meltdown to be deemed people.
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This Camera Can See the Mantis Shrimp's Invisible World
The ocean is more than dim and blue.
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Bhattacharya S et al. 2018 / Genome Research The Controversial Study of a Girl Who Ufologists Called ‘Alien’
DNA analysis done on unusual remains found in Chile proved the girl was human, but there has been an uproar over whether the body was acquired ethically.
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Seth Wenig / AP Scientists Still Don't Know Exactly Why Knuckles Crack
It has something to do with bubbles?
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Roberto Gomez / Getty The People Who Can Control Their Goose Bumps
How is this even possible?
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NIH The Y Chromosome's Still-Uncharted Regions
The human genome has never actually been complete.
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Reuters / Jonathan Ernst Why Can't Everyone Do the 'Asian Squat'?
All the way down! Not on your toes!
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Francois Mori / AP Ancient DNA Is Rewriting Human (and Neanderthal) History
The genomes of the long dead are turning up all sorts of unexpected and controversial findings.
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David Goldman / AP The Ease of the Postal Service Makes It a Vector for Violence
A short history of how the mail has been exploited for terror
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Peter Nicholls / Reuters An Ex-Russian Spy Was Poisoned by a Nerve Agent—How Does It Work?
Nerve agents are deadly and usually colorless, and they share a long history with insecticides.
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23andMe 23andMe Will Now Test for BRCA Breast-Cancer Genes
It’s the first FDA-authorized genetic-cancer-risk test available without a doctor’s note.
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Yaniv Erlich / The Atlantic The 'Genome Hacker' Who Mapped a 13-Million-Person Family Tree
Huge crowdsourced genealogy databases are inspiring new genetics research.
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CDC Consider the Fruit Fly
Modern genetics would not be possible without the humble fruit fly.
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Dima Gavrysh / AP Life Can Survive in the Most Mars-Like Place on Earth
A rare rainstorm in the Atacama Desert offers a clue to how microbes persist in extreme conditions.
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Josiah Zayner A Biohacker Regrets Publicly Injecting Himself With CRISPR
“There’s no doubt in my mind that somebody is going to end up hurt eventually.”
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Joe Skipper / AP Why Can't the U.S. Treat Gun Violence as a Public-Health Problem?
A 1996 bill has had a chilling effect on the CDC’s ability to research firearms.
