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. Humans

    Human mutation rate slower than thought

    First direct measurements show that the number of genetic typos inherited from each parent can be highly skewed toward either mom or dad.

  2. Life

    Heart has cellular regeneration ability

    In mice, injecting a protein spurs the organ’s own stem cells to regrow small amounts of tissue after damage.

  3. Health & Medicine

    PHOTOCAP: Deadly bugs

    Toxin-producing E. coli strain causes outbreak in Germany.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Inside Job

    Teams of microbes pull strings in the human body.

  5. Life

    Holding back evolution

    Gene mutations that are beneficial on their own combine to slow down progress, new bacterial experiments show.

  6. Life

    Mellow corals beat the heat

    Species that overreact to distress signals from algae are more likely to succumb to warming.

  7. Life

    Suspect bacterium may trigger Parkinson’s

    A study in mice shows that H. pylori, the microbe that causes stomach ulcers, may also affect the brain.

  8. Life

    Body attacks lab-made stem cells

    In mice, the immune system targets and destroys reprogrammed adult skin cells, raising questions about their medical potential.

  9. Humans

    ‘Bonding hormone’ linked to post-baby blues

    Low oxytocin levels in pregnant women may help predict whether they will have postpartum depression.

  10. Life

    Sickle-cell may blunt, not stop, malaria

    Once thought to keep parasite out of cells, the trait appears to diminish the severity of infection.

  11. Life

    Half-asleep rats look wide awake

    In a discovery with ominous implications for sleep deprivation, researchers find that some brain regions can doze off while an animal remains active.

  12. Life

    Gut bacteria come in three flavors

    Everybody has one of a trio of types — and which one seems to be less important than how the bugs behave.