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

    Gene makes some pilots get rusty faster

    A common DNA variant affects the pace of age-related decline in performance on skilled tasks like flying a plane.

  2. Life

    Live long, pass it on

    A tendency for a lengthy life can be inherited for several generations, even when offspring no longer have the genes for it.

  3. Life

    No shortage of dangerous DNA

    Woman who lived until age 115 didn’t lack genes that predispose her to disease, but she may have had some that protected her.

  4. Life

    Study maps disease-linked gene variants

    New evidence suggests that disease-associated genetic variants are mostly involved in regulating genes.

  5. Life

    Doubled gene means extra smarts

    Change during human evolution could have led to bigger brains.

  6. Life

    Stem cell advance uses cloning

    A method that uses eggs to do genetic reprogramming is successful in humans.

  7. Life

    Heart disease has its own clock

    Disrupting circadian rhythms in mouse blood vessels hardens arteries, suggesting that timing malfunctions in organs may cause disease.

  8. Life

    Cats engineered for disease resistance

    Genetically modified felines created in an effort to fight feline immunodeficiency virus.

  9. Tumor Tell-All

    Unraveling complex genetic stories in cancer cells may lead to personalized treatment.

  10. Life

    In the dark, cave fish follows its own rhythm

    Scientists unwind an odd biological clock to better understand how organisms set daily cycles.

  11. Life

    Belly bacteria boss the brain

    One type of gut microbe sends antianxiety messages through the vagus nerve, changing the behavior of mice.

  12. Life

    Genes may explain who gets sick from flu

    People who stay well even after being exposed to the flu have a strong immune reaction to the virus, but in exactly the opposite way as those who get sick.