Aged just 17, I got sick. The kind of sick doctors can’t diagnose using a blood test or a scan; the kind of illness that’s talked about in whispers, behind closed doors, if it were even talked about at all.
It started on my first morning back to school after a blissful summer. I clearly remember walking through the school hall and everything suddenly seeming grey and bleak.
Today, I know this was my first experience of the terrible weight
A flurry of reports about the genetics of the bird flu currently infecting U.S. cattle are offering insight into how the virus has and continues to spread. Since it first emerged in late 2020, this particular type of bird flu has infected a dizzying array of bird species, about 20 mammal species and some people (SN: 3/6/23; SN: 4/3/24). But transmission from cow to cow and from cow to person and other animals is new.
Now researchers tracing
Ancient herders, who rode horses and drove ox-drawn carts west out of their grassy homelands in southwest Asia, erased a DNA divide between far-flung farmers and hunter-gatherers-fishers around 5,000 years ago.
The molecular legacy of these ancient herders, known as the Yamnaya people, reshaped Eurasians’ genetic profile, impacting everything from their descendants’ height to their susceptibility to some diseases (SN: 3/3/23). For instance, it left people today with predominantly northern European ancestry especially prone to developing multiple sclerosis.
Up to one in 12 women unknowingly carry a genetic mutation that increases their risk of having blood clots when taking the Pill.
Everyone inherits two copies of a gene called factor V (F5) from their parents, which is vital for blood to clot properly in the event of an injury.
However, eight per cent of people have a mutated version that triggers a disorder called Factor V Leiden. While it causes no symptoms, it raises their risk of
The human Y chromosome, responsible for determining male sex, finally has gotten an end-to-end examination.
Researchers sequenced the chromosome, which contains many genes involved in sperm production and fertility, from a male of European descent. The new telomere-to-telomere, or tip-to-tip, construction adds more than 30 million DNA bases to a previously assembled reference Y chromosome, the team reports online August 23 in Nature. It is the final piece of the human pangenome, an effort to catalog all human DNA
It’s Tuesday afternoon and we’re in a lab on the sixth floor of an unremarkable building in the grounds of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.
Opposite, a building site rumbles with heavy machinery, while next door a busy eight-storey car park hums with a constant throng of patients, visitors and staff.
But behind these nondescript doors is something quite revolutionary. This is the East Genomics Laboratory Hub – one of seven new NHS facilities dotted across England that represent the beating heart
Darwin’s theory that genetic mutations are always random is wrong, a new study suggests, finding evidence of mutations in response to environmental pressures.
For more than a century scientists have held to Charles Darwin’s theory that all genetic mutations are random and accidental, with the most beneficial traits being passed on through the generations of breeding.
Researchers from the University of Haifa in Israel say that isn’t the case, finding that the generation of the human hemoglobin S (HbS) mutation
A man who is suffering from a one in two million genetic disorder that is slowly turning his muscles into bone has opened up about the stark realities of his condition – detailing his struggle to find love, while coming to terms with the harsh realization that he will never be able to fulfill his lifelong dream of traveling the world.
Joe Sooch, 29, from Kips Bay, New York, has fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), also known as ‘Stone Man Syndrome,’
