Posted 24 Oct 2012 / 0
The Chronicle of Higher Education “Reinventing Ourselves” This article is — in a word — scary. After dangling a couple of vague promises to engineer our susceptibility to viruses out of our collective genome (7 billion visits to the DNA doctor later), these authors plow enthusiastically into a variety of wild territories: resurrecting Neanderthals and Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Development, Epigenetics, Ethics, Evolution, Gene by Environment Interactions, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, Homo species, Human Evolution
Posted 29 Jun 2012 / 0
Science “The Development of C4 Rice: Current Progress and Future Challenges” I will be amazed if this works. The C3/C4 pathway split is a major evolutionary event in plants, and apparently we are poised to horizontally transfer this adaptation across lineages using genetic engineering. If this works, it will be an unprecedented feat of cultural Read More
A Minor Post, Food, Genetic Engineering, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture
Posted 07 Jun 2012 / 0
The Takeaway “New Developments in DNA Sequencing” The problem with this kind of story is that it confuses listeners. While it may be a technological advance to be able to perform complete genetic sequencing of a fetus without risky invasive procedures, this new ability does not necessarily lead to the kind of “baby selection” that Read More
A Minor Post, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, Radio & Podcasts
Posted 09 Nov 2010 / 0
Neuroscience represents a sort of “last frontier” in biology: despite decades of research into the nervous systems of a diverse set of organisms, scientific understanding of how the web of neurons we call a brain creates complex emergent patterns of cognition and behavior remains limited. Part of the challenge faced by neuroscience has to do Read More
Adaptation, Ethics, Experiments (General), Genetic Engineering, Neuroscience
