Online Science Editor Vincent Plant discusses how DNA evidence has transformed our understanding of Neolithic Ireland
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Ghosts in our past
Online Science Editor Vincent Plant discusses how Neanderthal DNA still impacts our lives.
The Ethics of Gene Editing
Sophie Ellen Buckland discusses whether it is ethical to change someone’s DNA even if it’s only to ‘cure’ someone of genetic diseases.
Babies by design
Chinese scientist Jiankui has claimed, in a series of YouTube videos, to have successfully edited the genomes of two embryos. These embryos were then allowed to develop and produced twin girls with altered DNA. Their genomes were edited using CRISPR, a gene editing technique first developed in 2015 to stop the function of a gene called […]
Three-parent babies
This year the UK is expecting the arrival of its first three-parent babies. We’re not sure exactly when these babies will be born, but we know that last year the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority approved two cases for the go-ahead at a fertility clinic in Newcastle. Obviously the first question to answer is how […]
CRISPR, Genetic Manipulation!
GENOMIC manipulation, whether due to its connotations of ‘futuristic mad scientist’ or what appears as sheer complexity of patterns of heredity, is consistently associated with words such as ‘dangerous’ and ‘worrying’. However, since 2013, a new technique called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, or more simply known by the acronym CRISPR, has turned up […]
Your storage with Microsoft DNA
Microsoft is developing DNA technology that could revolutionize data storage by the end of the decade. Just last year they transmitted 200 megabytes of literary classics – 100 in total – onto DNA, and are now looking to use this knowledge to tackle one of our newest technological problems. Our lives have been changed by […]
Women in Science: Rosalind Franklin; the forgotten discovery.
1962, the year that James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of “their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material”. This Nobel Prize was awarded 9 years after they published their discovery of the […]
Designer Genes
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has given a free pass to a DNA editing tool to alter the human genome. This opens the way to unprecedented control over the human genome, and the possibility to prevent, or even cure, genetic diseases. Back in 2012 Professor Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues were spending long hours […]
2017 Science – A Sneak Peek
Evading Extinction Unless you were a Trump-loving, music despising animal hater, 2016 had something to upset pretty much everyone. And as news broke that current mass extinction will be the greatest since the extinction of the dinosaurs, it was up to 2017 to make us feel a little better about the state of environmental affairs. […]