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.
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
Fred Greaves / Reuters How a Tiny Website Became the Police's Go-To Genealogy Database
“I never expected anything like this.”
-
![]()
Antonio Mirabile How to Get Scotch Tape Off of a Work of Art
“Tape is the bane of the conservator’s existence.”
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
Adrees Latif / Reuters Is Salt Bad? A Prison Study May Hold the Answer
Research on inmates is logistically difficult and ethically fraught.
-
![]()
Frank Pasmans The Origins of the Killer Fungus Driving Frogs to Extinction
Geneticists have finally found the pathogen’s ancestral home.
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research Your Body Acquires Trillions of New Mutations Every Day
And it’s somehow fine?
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
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.”
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
UCLA Health The Twice-Transplanted Kidney
“Few kidneys would be good enough” for this rare surgery.
-
![]()
The Atlantic The ‘g’ in Google’s Old Logo Is Really Weird
A tale of two “g”s
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This Camera Can See the Mantis Shrimp's Invisible World
The ocean is more than dim and blue.
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
Seth Wenig / AP Scientists Still Don't Know Exactly Why Knuckles Crack
It has something to do with bubbles?
-
![]()
Roberto Gomez / Getty The People Who Can Control Their Goose Bumps
How is this even possible?
