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

    Alzheimer’s disease protein structure may vary among patients

    Two people with different symptoms had amyloid-beta fibers with different shapes.

  2. Life

    Flu antibodies can make disease worse

    Pigs vaccinated against one influenza virus got lung damage if infected with another strain.

  3. Life

    Bats can carry MERS

    DNA of a deadly respiratory virus has been found in a Saudi Arabian mammal.

  4. Life

    Years or decades later, flu exposure still prompts immunity

    New forms of influenza viruses can spur production of antibodies to past pandemics in people who lived through them.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Mediterranean diet may offset genetic risk for stroke

    Compared to a low-fat diet, eating fish and olive oil kept blood sugar levels lower in people with a common diabetes risk factor.

  6. Humans

    DNA reveals details of the peopling of the Americas

    Migrants came in three distinct waves that interbred once in the New World.

  7. Genetics

    A glowing green thumb

    Omri Amirav-Drory wants to engineer a glow-in-the-dark garden.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Camels implicated as possible hosts of MERS virus

    Antibodies to a mysterious pathogen that has sickened 94 people were found in camels in Oman and the Canary Islands.

  9. Science & Society

    Flu researchers plan to repeat controversial work

    The scientists who made the H5N1 strain transmissible between ferrets intend to do the same with H7N9.

  10. Genetics

    The Sports Gene

    Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein.

  11. Life

    Mouse retinas grown in lab

    Transplanted cells can function in rodents' eyes.

  12. Genetics

    Technique inactivates Down-causing chromosome

    Though far from a cure, the advance could eventually lead to gene therapy that alleviates some symptoms.