Imagine you are Brad Pitt. After you stay one night in the Ritz, someone sneaks in and collects some skin cells from your pillow. But that’s not all. Using a novel fertility technology, your movie star cells are transformed into sperm and …Continue reading
One Man’s Quest to Hack His Own Genes
n a dream Brian Hanley told me about, he’s riding a bus when he meets a man in dark leather clothing. Next thing he knows, he is splayed across a tilted metal bed, being electrocuted. The dream was no doubt connected to …Continue reading
Spray-On RNA Protects Plants from Viruses for Weeks
Scientists have demonstrated that they can use a crop spray to silence genes in plants, rendering the plants resistant to a virus for several weeks. A team at the University of Queensland in Australia has developed a technique that allows it to …Continue reading
A Genetically Modified Malaria Vaccine Has Passed an Important Hurdle
It seems a primitive way to fight one of the world’s worst diseases, but 10 volunteers have been bitten by malaria-carrying mosquitoes in an effort to test out a new kind of genetically modified vaccine. So far, so good: no one got …Continue reading
On Patrol with America’s Top Bioterror Cop
Seen something strange growing in a petri dish in a friend’s basement? Know an angry graduate student working odd hours in a pathogen lab? You might want to call Edward You. As a supervisory special agent in the weapons of mass destruction …Continue reading
Can CRISPR Save Ben Dupree?
At 24, Benjamin Dupree has outlived many people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. It was diagnosed 15 years ago, after he struggled to get up the stairs without using the banister. Doctors say the disease is terminal, but they tell you less about …Continue reading
Personalized Cancer Vaccine Prevents Leukemia Relapse in Patients
Shortly after Ernest Levy of Cooperstown, New York, returned from a trip to South Africa with his son for the 2010 World Cup, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. The prognosis didn’t look good for Levy, now 76. Just over a …Continue reading
In the Battle Against Zika, Researchers Prepare for a Marathon
The World Health Organization is no longer classifying Zika virus as an international public health emergency. That’s not to say that it’s abated. Rather, the WHO is settling in for the long haul, deciding that the virus will be beaten by a …Continue reading
Obama Advisers Urge Action Against CRISPR Bioterror Threat
Scientific advisers to President Obama warn that the U.S. urgently needs a new biodefense strategy and should regularly brief President-elect Donald Trump on the dangers posed by new technologies like CRISPR, gene therapy, and synthetic DNA, which they say could be coöpted …Continue reading
CRISPR-Modified Cells Have Been Used in a Person for the First Time
A team of Chinese scientists has become the first to test CRISPR gene-edited cells in a human. The researchers, from Sichuan University in Chengdu, injected the cells into a patient with advanced lung cancer. The experiment marks the beginning of an early …Continue reading