![Tina Hesman Saey](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/t_saey.jpg?resize=214%2C214&ssl=1)
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
- Life
Protein crucial in preventing Parkinson’s
By destroying bad mitochondria, Parkin protects cells
- Health & Medicine
Sleep makes room for memories
Sleep erases old memories to make way for new learning
- Health & Medicine
Neandertals, gut microbes and mail-order ancestry tests
Geneticists weigh in during the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.
- Health & Medicine
Diversity of human skin bacteria revealed
First large-scale inventory of microbes charts types, locales of bacteria.
- Humans
Women’s chromosome division different from men’s
Using fluorescent markers, scientists are discovering that men and women divide chromosomes differently. The research may help explain Down syndrome and other chromosomal disorders.
- Neuroscience
Selective memory
Using genetic engineering and chemical manipulation, scientists erased the memory of a stressful experience from a mouse’s brain.
- Life
Community of one
Scientists have discovered how a single bacterial species living in a gold mine in South Africa survives on its own. Its genome contains everything it needs to live independently.
- Health & Medicine
Don’t forget diet composition
Caloric restriction, an antiaging technique, fails to lower levels of IGF-1, a growth factor that, in high amounts, is linked to cancer in humans. But cutting protein along with calories does decrease IGF-1.
- Life
X chromosome is extra diverse
Men who father children with multiple women are responsible for “extra” diversity on the X chromosome, a new study of six different populations suggests.
- Health & Medicine
This is the brain on age
The activity of genes in men's brains begins to change sooner than it does in women's brains, a new study shows.
- Life
First lipid hormone discovered
An omega-7 fatty acid made by fat and liver cells acts as a hormone, even mimicking the health benefits of insulin.
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Immune cell plays good cop, bad cop
Immune cells called macrophages aid neuron regeneration in some parts of the nervous system, but hinder regeneration in the brain and spinal cord.