Genetics
- Health & Medicine
How some ticks protect themselves from deadly bacteria on human skin
A gene that ticks acquired from bacteria 40 million years ago may help the arachnids keep potential pathogens at bay while feeding on blood.
- Genetics
A key to the mystery of fast-evolving genes was found in ‘junk DNA’
A new study challenges a long-held belief that essential genes change little over time.
- Genetics
Penicillin allergies may be linked to one immune system gene
Researchers have located a shared hot spot — on the HLA-B gene — in the immune system in people who say they have penicillin allergies.
- Microbes
How malaria parasites hide from the human immune system
By turning genes on or off, the parasite keeps blood levels low but persistent, so infection doesn’t set off alarm bells for the immune system.
- Genetics
Gene-editing tool CRISPR wins the chemistry Nobel
A gene-editing tool developed just eight years ago that has “revolutionized the life sciences” nabbed the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
- Health & Medicine
Hepatitis C discoveries win 2020 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine
The 2020 medicine Nobel recognizes work that found that a novel virus was to blame for chronic hepatitis and led to a test to screen blood donations.
- Genetics
Strict new guidelines lay out a path to heritable human gene editing
But scientists say making changes in DNA that can be passed on to future generations still isn’t safe and effective, yet.
- Health & Medicine
In a first, a person’s immune system fought HIV — and won
Some rare people may purge most HIV from their bodies, leaving only broken copies of the virus or copies locked in molecular prisons, from which there is no escape.
- Life
Climate change, not hunters, may have killed off woolly rhinos
Ancient DNA indicates that numbers of woolly rhinos held steady long after people arrived on the scene.
- Animals
How tuatara live so long and can withstand cool weather
Tuatara may look like your average lizard, but they’re not. Now, researchers have deciphered the rare reptiles’ genome, or genetic instruction book.
- Animals
An immune system quirk may help anglerfish fuse with mates during sex
Deep-sea anglerfish that fuse to mate lack genes involved in the body’s response against pathogens or foreign tissue.
- Genetics
A bacterial toxin enables the first mitochondrial gene editor
Researchers have engineered a protein from bacteria that kills other microbes to change DNA in a previously inaccessible part of the cell.
