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

    The genetic evolution of Darwin’s finches

    A genetic analysis divides Darwin’s finches into more species and uncovers a gene involved in determining beak shape.

  2. Neuroscience

    A brain at rest offers clues to Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s

    PET scans reveal that the breakdown of brain networks differs in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

  3. Humans

    Baby brains undergo dramatic changes in utero

    Developing human brains experience more than 28,000 changes in a molecular process that governs gene activity.

  4. Science & Society

    Big data studies come with replication challenges

    As science moves into big data research — analyzing billions of bits of DNA or other data from thousands of research subjects — concern grows that much of what is discovered is fool’s gold.

  5. Neuroscience

    Decoding sommeliers’ brains, one squirt of wine at a time

    Researchers use a ‘gustometer’ to control wine portions in experiments comparing the brains of sommeliers and novices.

  6. Life

    When bacteria-killing viruses take over, it’s bad news for the gut

    A rise in some bacteria-killing viruses in the intestines may deplete good bacteria and trigger inflammatory bowel diseases.

  7. Life

    Human evolution tied to a small fraction of the genome

    Natural selection has concentrated on a small portion of the human genome, and mostly not on genes themselves.

  8. Life

    In battle to shape immunity, environment often beats genes

    The environment, especially microbes, shapes immune system reactions more than genes do.

  9. Science & Society

    12 reasons research goes wrong

    Barriers to research replication are based largely in a scientific culture that pits researchers against each other in competition for scarce resources. Here are a few that skew results.

  10. Science & Society

    Is redoing scientific research the best way to find truth?

    Researchers don’t even agree on whether it is necessary to duplicate studies exactly or to validate the underlying principles.

  11. Health & Medicine

    More oxygen may lead to more tumors

    Lung cancer risk drops at higher elevations where the air is thinner.

  12. Humans

    Babbling to babies is OK, despite previous warnings against it

    Fifty years ago, a researcher advised banning baby talk, but results since then say otherwise.