Written by Mary Emily O’Hara for intomore.com [Excerpt]: “In plain English, the federal government is proposing reclassifying transgender people’s legal sex back to the sex assigned at birth. And if that sex at birth was listed wrong or left unclear, the government wants to put people through genetic testing to ensure a sort of “gender purity,” as it were. The…
Scientists attending a recent meeting of the American Society for Microbiology reported they had uncovered a highly disturbing trend. They revealed that bacteria containing a gene known as mcr-1 – which confers resistance to the antibiotic colistin – had spread round the world at an alarming rate since its original discovery 18 months earlier. In one area of China, it…
After observing the mating habits of chacma baboons living in the wild over a four-year period, researchers have found that males of the species often use long-term sexual intimidation to control their mates. The findings suggest that this mating strategy has a long history in primates, including humans, and may be widespread across social mammals — especially when males of…
UK scientists have been given the go-ahead by the fertility regulator to genetically modify human embryos. It is the first time a country has considered the DNA-altering technique in embryos and approved it. The research will take place at the Francis Crick Institute in London and aims to provide a deeper understanding of the earliest moments of human life. The…
Fifteen chemicals that disrupt our endocrine hormonal systems have been linked to earlier menopause among US women. Amber Cooper from Washington University in St Louis, US, and colleagues found women aged 45 to 55 exposed to the organic compounds were up to six times more likely to be menopausal than unexposed peers. The substances include long-banned but persistent polychlorinated biphenyls…
Like many novel technologies in this age of TED Talks and Silicon Valley triumphalism, synthetic biology—synbio for short—floats on a sea of hype. One of its founding scientists, Boston University biomedical engineer James Collins, has called it “genetic engineering on steroids.” Whereas garden-variety genetic engineers busy themselves moving genes from one organism into another—to create tomatoes that don’t bruise easily,…