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

    DNA to flutter by

    The complete genetic instruction book for making monarch butterflies contains information about how the insects manage their long migration to Mexico.

  2. Life

    Immune cells function beyond battle

    Cells lining the intestines take cues from immune cells and gut bacteria when deciding whether self-defense or metabolism is more important.

  3. Life

    Chromosome glitch tied to separation anxiety

    The finding is the latest in a series linking extra or missing gene copies to mental conditions.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Sleep doesn’t help old folks remember

    Reduced quality of slumber with age erases memory benefits of snoozing.

  5. Life

    A gland grows itself

    Japanese researchers coax a pituitary to develop from stem cells in a lab dish.

  6. Life

    Prehistoric horses came in leopard print

    Dappled animals, once thought to be the result of selective breeding after domestication, were around when early humans depicted them on cave walls.

  7. Life

    Nearness key in microbe DNA swaps

    Close quarters, like those inside the human body, are the most important factor in determining how often bacteria pick up one another’s genes.

  8. Life

    Gut bacteria linked to MS

    Gut bacteria appear to play a role in initiating multiple sclerosis in mice.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. Life

    Study maps disease-linked gene variants

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