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. Health & Medicine

    Chinese patient is first to be treated with CRISPR-edited cells

    Researchers used CRISPR/Cas9 to engineer immune cells that were then injected into a patient with lung cancer, the journal Nature reports.

  2. Life

    Protein mobs kill cells that most need those proteins to survive

    A protein engineered to aggregate gives clues about how clumpy proteins kill brain cells.

  3. Genetics

    Gene gives mice and chipmunks their pinstripes

    A recycled regulator paints on rodents’ light stripes.

  4. Genetics

    Protective genetic variant may offer a path to future autoimmune therapies

    A natural tweak in the TYK2 protein strikes a balance between weak and overactive immune systems.

  5. Genetics

    Genetic variant protects against rash of autoimmune diseases

    A natural tweak in the TYK2 protein strikes a balance between weak and overactive immune systems.

  6. Genetics

    Ancient hookups gave chimps a smidge of bonobo DNA

    Genetic evidence suggests bonobos and chimpanzees interbred after becoming separate species.

  7. Genetics

    HIV came to NYC at least a decade before virus ID’d

    DNA analysis of early viral strains tracks U.S. debut to early ’70s

  8. Genetics

    DNA data offer evidence of unknown extinct human relative

    Melanesians may carry genetic evidence of a previously unknown extinct human relative.

  9. Genetics

    Zika disrupts cellular processes to impair brain development

    Discoveries about how Zika virus slows brain cell development could lead to treatments.

  10. Genetics

    ‘Three-parent babies’ explained

    Several in vitro techniques can produce babies with three biological parents.

  11. Life

    In a first, mouse eggs grown from skin cells

    Stem cells grown in ovary-mimicking conditions in a lab dish can make healthy mouse offspring, but technique still needs work.

  12. Chemistry

    Molecules for making nanomachines snare chemistry Nobel

    Nanochemists win Nobel prize for devising molecular machines