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.
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All Stories by Tina Hesman Saey
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Life
Genes are no crystal ball for disease risk
For most conditions, knowing a person’s entire genetic makeup won’t help predict his or her medical history.
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Life
Old cancer drugs offer new tricks
Drugs that reboot genetic programming make tumor cells more susceptible to cancer-killing therapy.
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Life
The yin and yang of male pattern baldness
The discovery of a hormone-like molecule in the scalp may offer new clues for treating baldness.
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Life
Antibody may explain collagen’s undoing
A newly discovered process could help account for the destruction that rheumatoid arthritis causes.
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Life
Geneticists go ape for better primate family tree
The first gorilla genome and a more detailed look at chimp genetics provide new clues to evolution of humans and their closest relatives.
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Anthropology
Frozen mummy’s genetic blueprints unveiled
DNA study reveals the 5,300-year-old Iceman had brown eyes, Lyme disease and links to modern-day Corsicans and Sardinians.
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Life
Eggs may be made throughout adulthood
The discovery of stem cells in human ovaries suggests that women are not born with a lifetime’s supply of gametes.
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Life
Bird flu less deadly, but more widespread, than official numbers suggest
The H5N1 virus appears to have infected far more than the 573 officially confirmed victims.
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Genetics
Crosses make lab mice even more useful
Scientists have bred new strains of lab animals with the goal of making it easier to tease out genetic components of complex diseases.
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Life
All genes aren’t indispensable
Even healthy people may have about 20 genes that are completely inactivated, a new study finds.
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Life
How a stomach bug may ward off asthma
An ulcer- and cancer-causing bacterium may protect against the airway disease by influencing key players in inflammation.