The Sciences
Gene Therapy's Second Act
A decade and a half after a series of tragic setbacks led to critical reevaluations, scientists say gene therapy is ready to enter the clinic
Stories by Ricki Lewis
A Spleen Gene-and a Ribosomal Surprise
Health
Incidental Findings from Genome Sequencing Nuances and Caveats
You have your genome or exome (the protein-encoding part) sequenced to help diagnose a puzzling set of symptoms, and something totally unrelated, and unexpected, turns up – a so-called “incidental finding.”Surprises, of course, aren’t new in medicine...
New Guidelines on Testing Kids DNA-the Cliff s Notes Version
Health
Gene Therapies Will Cure Many a Disease
Gene therapy, once off to a rocky start, transforms medicine by getting at the root cause of many diseases
Evolution
The Battle of the Prenatal Tests
The young couple looked at me expectantly as I re-read the amnio report and tried to decide what to tell them.“The ultrasound from 15 weeks looks fine,” I stalled, trying to present the good news first.“What about the amnio?”“Well, there is something unusual...
The Denisova Genome and Guys Banging Rocks
Health
Like a Game of Clue, Genomics Tracks Outbreak, Revealing Evolution in Action
Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with a lead pipe? Or Mrs. Peacock in the ballroom with a candlestick? No, it was deadly, drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae from a 43-year-old woman spreading to 17 other patients, killing 6 of them and sickening 5 others, at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Clinical Center in June 2011.In a biotech version of the classic board game "Clue," researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) used genome sequencing to solve the medical mystery of how the infection spread...
Hidden Meanings in Our Genomes-and What to Do with Mendel
Rare Diseases: 5 Recent Reasons to Cheer
Is Future-Use DNA Sampling Ethical?
Health
Amniotic Fluid + Valproic Acid = New Source of Human Stem Cells
I’ve written about human stem cells from all sorts of sources, from human embryos circa 1997 (“Embryonic Stem Cells Debut Amid Little Media Attention,” The Scientist, too ancient for a link), to old people’s teeth...
4 Suggestions for Halting the Lethality of Cancer
The Bonobo Genome and Rewinding the Tape of Life
UGS (Universal Genome Sequencing) in the Mid-21st Century
The "Valley of Death" Looms for 8 Kids with a Rare Disease
Evolution
10 Things Exome Sequencing Can t Do-but Why It s Still Powerful
Sequencing of the exome – the protein-encoding parts of all the genes – is beginning to dominate the genetics journals as well as headlines, thanks to its ability to diagnose the formerly undiagnosable.The 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting honored the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel’s coverage of a 4-year-old whose intestinal disorder was finally diagnosed after sequencing his exome...
Body-Altering Mutations -in Humans and Flies
A Tale of 2 G-Spots
