Press Events

Don’t be alarmed, but a bacterium that could turn deadly is on your skin right now. This bacterium, Staphylococcus epidermis, is usually harmless, but it may harbor genes that could help it exploit any opportunity to grow in your bloodstream. Once there, it could shrug off your immune response, resist the antibiotics you receive, andRead more

The largest study of CRISPR action to date has developed a method to predict the exact mutations CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing can introduce to a cell. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute edited 40,000 different pieces of DNA and analysed a thousand million resulting DNA sequences to reveal the effects of the gene editing and developRead more

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) report that they have discovered why some lung cancers become drug-resistant after initially responding to targeted therapies. In the process, they say they devised a new two-pronged approach that yields an effective treatment for these cancers in the laboratory and holds promise for the future ofRead more

An international team of scientists has identified a protein that boosts the energy-burning activity of brown fat in mice, and which could feasibly lead to the development of new therapeutic approaches for treating obesity in humans. The research, headed by a team at the University of Cambridge, U.K., showed that the protein, BMP8b, effectively superchargesRead more

Imagine a DNA database populated with data from every individual in society and made available to law enforcement. Such a database sounds ominous, especially if you’ve watched Black Mirror or similarly dystopian-themed programs. But such a DNA database could also be reassuring, suggests a team of scientific and policy experts at Vanderbilt University. According toRead more