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. Genetics

    A genetic scorecard could predict your risk of being obese

    A genetic score predicts who is at risk of severe obesity, but experts say lifestyle matters more than genes.

  2. Genetics

    Some people may have genes that hamper a drug’s HIV protection

    Newly discovered genetic variants could explain why an anti-HIV medication doesn’t protect everyone.

  3. Genetics

    How chemical exposure early in life is ‘like a ticking time bomb’

    Some early life experiences can affect health, but only if unmasked by events in adulthood.

  4. Health & Medicine

    A common food additive may make the flu vaccine less effective

    A food preservative may impair the ability to fight the flu, a study in mice suggests.

  5. Genetics

    Here are 5 RNAs that are stepping out of DNA’s shadow

    RNAs do a lot more than act as middlemen for protein building. Here are a few of the ways they affect your health and disease.

  6. Life

    How emus and ostriches lost the ability to fly

    Changes in regulatory DNA, rather than mutations to genes themselves, grounded some birds, a study finds.

  7. Genetics

    A Nobel Prize winner argues banning CRISPR babies won’t work

    Human gene editing needs responsible regulation, but a ban isn’t the way to go, says Nobel laureate David Baltimore.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Treating cystic fibrosis patients before birth could safeguard organs

    Starting a cystic fibrosis drug sooner than usual may protect an afflicted child’s lungs, pancreases and reproductive tissue, a study in ferrets hints.

  9. Genetics

    Resurrecting woolly mammoth cells is hard to do

    Japanese scientists say some proteins in frozen mammoth cells may still work after 28,000 years. But that activity may be more mouse than mammoth.

  10. Genetics

    Geneticists push for a 5-year global ban on gene-edited babies

    Prominent scientists are using the word “moratorium” to make it clear that experiments to create babies with altered genes are wrong, for now.

  11. Genetics

    A CRISPR spin-off causes unintended typos in DNA

    One type of CRISPR gene editor makes frequent and widespread mistakes, studies in mice and rice reveal.

  12. Life

    Eating a lot of fiber could improve some cancer treatments

    A high-fiber diet, which boosts the diversity of gut microbes, may make an immune therapy against skin cancer more effective.