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

    Starchy diet may have transformed wolves to dogs

    Gaining the ability to digest carbohydrates may have been an important step in domesticating dogs.

  2. Life

    Genes tied to body mass set point

    Genes may help determine why some mice (and perhaps people) become obese when eating a sugar- and fat-laden diet.

  3. Life

    Genes indicate Stone Age link between India and Australia

    Genetic evidence suggests some people migrated from India to Australia roughly 4,300 years ago.

  4. Life

    Reprieve for reprogrammed stem cells

    A study published in 2011 in Nature found that stem cells produced by reprogramming mouse skin cells get attacked when transplanted back into mice.

  5. Life

    Corals beat heat by being prepared

    Warming waters have little effect on reef-building organisms that activate adaptive genes before the temperature starts to rise.

  6. Science & Society

    Cell biologists hone elevator pitches

    Competition challenges scientists to summarize their work for a captive lay audience.

  7. Life

    Pressure keeps cancer in check

    In lab experiments, physically confining malignant cells prevents runaway growth.

  8. Life

    Heart telltale

    Engineered cells that flash when they beat may offer a new way to test drugs for cardiac toxicity.

  9. Alt science

    View the video After a day of computer programming and poring over genetic data, Pardis Sabeti relaxes her brain by writing rock songs. Pardis Sabeti sorts through reams of genetic information to find genes that have been shaped by natural selection to resist disease. Olivier Douliery Born in Tehran, Sabeti is a computational biologist at […]

  10. Evolving E. coli

    25-year experiment sees real-time natural selection.

  11. Life

    Women may make new eggs

    If true, finding could lead to new fertility treatments.

  12. Life

    Controversial bird flu papers fly

    But research freeze holds.