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. Neuroscience

    Both fish and humans have REM-like sleep

    Sleeping zebrafish have brain and body activity similar to snoozing mammals, suggesting that sleep evolved at least 450 million years ago.

  2. Life

    These fungi drug cicadas with psilocybin or amphetamine to make them mate nonstop

    Massospora fungi use a compound found in magic mushrooms or an amphetamine to drive infected cicadas to mate and mate and mate.

  3. Life

    Dried Earth microbes could grow on Mars with just a little humidity

    Showing that salt-loving bacteria can double their numbers after absorbing damp air has implications for life on other planets.

  4. Genetics

    DNA confirms a weird Greenland whale was a narwhal-beluga hybrid

    DNA analysis of a skull indicates that the animal had a narwhal mother and beluga father.

  5. Life

    Norovirus close-ups might help fight stomach flu

    Detailed views of a common stomach virus that causes vomiting and diarrhea could aid vaccine and disinfectant development.

  6. Genetics

    Genealogy companies could struggle to keep clients’ data from police

    Police probably won’t stop searching DNA family trees to find crime suspects. New restrictions on database searches could spur more fights over privacy.

  7. Genetics

    Almost all healthy people harbor patches of mutated cells

    Even healthy tissues can build up mutations, some of which have been tied to cancer.

  8. Health & Medicine

    A fungus weaponized with a spider toxin can kill malaria mosquitoes

    In controlled field experiments in Burkina Faso, a genetically engineered fungus reduced numbers of insecticide-resistant mosquitoes that can carry malaria.

  9. Life

    How bacteria nearly killed by antibiotics can recover — and gain resistance

    A pump protein can keep bacteria alive long enough for the microbes to develop antibiotic resistance.

  10. Genetics

    Key parts of a fruit fly’s genetic makeup have finally been decoded

    Jumping genes may make it possible to divvy up chromosomes.

  11. Genetics

    Tweaking one gene with CRISPR switched the way a snail shell spirals

    The first gene-edited snails confirm which gene is responsible for the direction of the shell’s spiral.

  12. Health & Medicine

    50 years ago, scientists tried to transplant part of a human eye

    In 1969, a doctor tried and failed to restore a 54-year-old man’s vision. Fifty years later, scientists are still struggling to make eye transplants work.