McKenzie Prillaman

Staff Writer, Life Sciences

McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC, who interned at Science News in spring 2023. She holds a degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and studied adolescent nicotine dependence at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. After figuring out she’d rather explain scientific research than conduct it, she worked at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and then earned a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work has appeared in Nature, Scientific American, The Cancer Letter and The Mercury News, among other publications.

All Stories by McKenzie Prillaman

  1. Health & Medicine

    Psychedelics may improve mental health by getting inside nerve cells

    Psychedelics can get inside neurons, causing them to grow. This might underlie the drugs’ potential in combatting mental health disorders.

  2. Health & Medicine

    3-D maps of a protein show how it helps organs filter out toxic substances

    Images of LRP2 in simulated cell environments reveal the structural changes that let it catch molecules outside a cell and release them inside.

  3. Health & Medicine

    How fingerprints form was a mystery — until now

    A theory proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing in the 1950s helps explain how fingerprint patterns such as arches and whorls arise.

  4. Animals

    A newfound ‘croakless’ frog may communicate via touch

    A newly discovered frog species in Tanzania joins a rare group of frogs that don’t croak or ribbit.

  5. Animals

    Are your cats having fun or fighting? Here are some ways to tell

    Certain behaviors indicate if your cats’ interaction is friendly, aggressive or something in between, a new study finds.

  6. Materials Science

    These shape-shifting devices melt and re-form thanks to magnetic fields

    Miniature machines made of gallium embedded with magnetic particles can switch between solid and liquid states.