Tina Hesman Saey

Tina Hesman Saey

Senior Writer, Molecular Biology

Senior writer Tina Hesman Saey is a geneticist-turned-science writer who covers all things microscopic and a few too big to be viewed under a microscope. She is an honors graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she did research on tobacco plants and ethanol-producing bacteria. She spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, studying microbiology and traveling.  Her work on how yeast turn on and off one gene earned her a Ph.D. in molecular genetics at Washington University in St. Louis. Tina then rounded out her degree collection with a master’s in science journalism from Boston University. She interned at the Dallas Morning News and Science News before returning to St. Louis to cover biotechnology, genetics and medical science for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. After a seven year stint as a newspaper reporter, she returned to Science News. Her work has been honored by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the Endocrine Society, the Genetics Society of America and by journalism organizations.

All Stories by Tina Hesman Saey

  1. Fly naps inspire dreams of sleep genetics

    Researchers have discovered a sleep-like state in the fruit fly.

  2. Animals

    Flight puts the fight back into crickets

    Researchers are just discovering what gamblers in China have known for centuries—flying can make a losing cricket fight again.

  3. Earth

    DDT treatment turns male fish into mothers

    Injecting into fish eggs an estrogen-mimicking form of the pesticide DDT transforms genetically male medaka fish into apparent females able to lay eggs that produce young.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Meaty receptor helps tongue savor flavor

    Scientists have identified a receptor protein in taste buds that recognizes the flavor of monosodium glutamate.