Sarah Zhang
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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Herwig Prammer / Reuters Europe Is Running Low on CO2
The shortfall has sparked fears of shortages of beer, meat, and crumpets. (Crumpets!)
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AP / Wilson Ring Does GMO Labeling Actually Increase Support for GMOs?
The consequences of a labeling law in Vermont were not what either side expected.
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Science Photo Library / Steve Gschmeissner / Getty The Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500,000 Times in Human DNA
Its segments make up 17 percent of our genome, but scientists are only just starting to understand what it does.
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Neil Orman / AAAS Why Would You Want a Prosthetic Hand That Feels Pain?
“After many years I felt my hand, as if a hollow shell, got filled with life again.”
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rangizzz / kotoffei / Shutterstock / Arsh Raziuddin ... The Little-Known Nonprofit Behind the CRISPR Boom
A DNA archive has been quietly connecting labs from Massachusetts to China to Iraq.
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Steven Clevenger / Getty More Americans Are Dying From Suicide
A new report finds that rates have risen in almost every state since 1999.
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Cornelia Li China Is Genetically Engineering Monkeys With Brain Disorders
A visit to a facility in Guangdong province, where researchers are tinkering with monkey brains in order to understand the most severe forms of autism
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Susan Walsh / AP / twenty1studio / Shutterstock ... A CRISPR Pioneer on Gene Editing: 'We Shouldn't Screw It Up'
Feng Zhang says many problems still have to be solved before the technology can be used to treat human diseases.
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Fred Greaves / Reuters How a Tiny Website Became the Police's Go-To Genealogy Database
“I never expected anything like this.”
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Antonio Mirabile How to Get Scotch Tape Off of a Work of Art
“Tape is the bane of the conservator’s existence.”
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Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office The Coming Wave of Murders Solved by Genealogy
The same DNA analysis used to find the alleged Golden State Killer has led to the arrest of a second alleged murderer. It’ll likely lead to more.
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Adrees Latif / Reuters Is Salt Bad? A Prison Study May Hold the Answer
Research on inmates is logistically difficult and ethically fraught.
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Frank Pasmans The Origins of the Killer Fungus Driving Frogs to Extinction
Geneticists have finally found the pathogen’s ancestral home.
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CDC / Dr. Erskine Palmer The Oldest Virus Ever Sequenced Comes From a 7,000-Year-Old Tooth
It seems to belong to an extinct lineage of hepatitis B.
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MEMBERHS / exopixel / Prostock-studio / Shutterstock / ... The Last Days of the Blue-Blood Harvest
Every year, more than 400,000 crabs are bled for the miraculous medical substance that flows through their bodies—now pharmaceutical companies are finally committing to an alternative that doesn't harm animals.
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National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research Your Body Acquires Trillions of New Mutations Every Day
And it’s somehow fine?
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Fred Greaves How a Genealogy Website Led to the Alleged Golden State Killer
Powerful tools are now available to anyone who wants to look for a DNA match, which has troubling privacy implications.
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23andMe 23andMe Wants Its DNA Data to Be Less White
The company is offering free kits to researchers studying populations in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere—but the ethics are tricky.
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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.
