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. Life

    Some viruses thwart bacterial defenses with a unique genetic alphabet

    DNA has four building blocks: A, C, T and G. But some bacteriophages swap A for Z, and scientists have figured out how and why they do it.

  2. Health & Medicine

    FDA and CDC OK resuming J&J COVID-19 shots paused over rare clot concerns

    The single-dose vaccine carries a low risk of rare blood clots in women under 50, but experts say its benefits outweigh that risk.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Experts predict U.S. COVID-19 cases will dip in summer but surge in winter

    Masks, vaccines and coronavirus variants could all affect how bad a predicted winter surge gets.

  4. Health & Medicine

    The P.1 coronavirus variant is twice as transmissible as earlier strains

    The variant first found in Brazil can evade some immunity from previous COVID-19 infections, making reinfections a possibility.

  5. Humans

    New depictions of ancient hominids aim to overcome artistic biases

    Artists’ intuition instead of science drive most facial reconstructions of extinct species. Some researchers hope to change that.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines may block infection as well as disease

    The mRNA vaccines are about 90 percent effective at blocking coronavirus infection, which could lead to reduced transmission, real-world data suggest.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Here’s what makes 4 promising COVID-19 vaccines unique — and potentially useful

    More vaccines still in the works are exploring a variety of approaches, including pills and electrical zaps.

  8. Health & Medicine

    The COVID-19 pandemic is now a year old. What have scientists learned?

    As we enter the pandemic’s second year, researchers share what they’ve learned and what they look forward to.

  9. Health & Medicine

    People fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can socialize without masks, CDC says

    Two weeks after their final COVID-19 shot, people can visit other vaccinated people indoors without masks or physical distancing.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Most pro athletes who got COVID-19 didn’t develop heart inflammation

    Few professional athletes developed heart inflammation after a bout of COVID-19, but how the findings relate to the general public isn’t clear.

  11. Genetics

    DNA databases are too white, so genetics doesn’t help everyone. How do we fix that?

    A lack of diversity in genetic databases is making precision medicine ineffective for many people. One historian proposes a solution: construct reference genomes for individual populations.

  12. Health & Medicine

    People who have had COVID-19 might need only one shot of a coronavirus vaccine

    Antibody levels in health care workers who had COVID-19 and got vaccinated were more than 500 times higher than those vaccinated but never infected.