Genetics and Heredity
Philanthropists Push Police Searches of DNA Databases
Mr. Mittelman, Othram’s C.E.O., said his company had received more than $400,000 from philanthropic donors. According to Crunchbase, the start-up has also raised $28.5 million from institutional investors to corner the market around this new investigative technique. Founded in The Woodlands, Texas, in 2018, the company now has 30 employees, said Mr. Mittelman, including five […]
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A Gene Sequencing Pioneer Battles Over What It Can Buy
Illumina, the leading maker of gene-sequencing machines, is tiny compared with the tech giants of Silicon Valley. But like Google and Facebook, Illumina now finds itself in the cross hairs of antitrust enforcers in the United States and Europe. The company bought Grail, a promising start-up in a related business that does not really exist […]
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In New York City Sewage, a Mysterious Coronavirus Signal
“To have something in a sewershed that you’re detecting, you need a fair bit of it around,” said Dr. Adam Lauring, a virologist at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the research. Dr. Johnson, the Missouri virologist, agrees. He favors the hypothesis that the sequences are coming from animals, perhaps a few […]
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How Omicron’s Mutations Allow It To Thrive
Because an immunocompromised host doesn’t produce a lot of antibodies, many viruses are left to propagate. And new mutant viruses that resist the antibodies can multiply. A mutation that allows a virus to evade antibodies isn’t necessarily advantageous. It could make the virus’s spike protein unstable so that it can’t latch quickly onto a cell, […]
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In a First, Man Receives a Heart From a Genetically Altered Pig
“It was either die or do this transplant,” Mr. Bennett said before the surgery, according to officials at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice.” Dr. Griffith said he first broached the experimental treatment in mid-December, a “memorable” and […]
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Sickle Cell Math Is Brutally Simple, but Not Widely Taught
No doctor ever counseled Lametra Scott and her husband, Rickey Buggs, to get a simple blood test that would have warned them they each carried a mutated gene that — if inherited from both — would cause sickle cell disease in their baby. It was only after a routine blood test around week 16 of […]
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Omicron Is a Dress Rehearsal for the Next Pandemic
Seek and you shall find In any other context, it would have been unremarkable: On Sunday, Nov. 28, a San Francisco resident who had been feeling mildly ill took a Covid test. The next day, it came back positive. What set off alarm bells, however, was that the resident had recently returned from South Africa, […]
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Why Didn’t the U.S. Detect Omicron Cases Sooner?
Last Friday, just a day after South African scientists first announced the discovery of the Omicron variant, Europe reported its first case: The new coronavirus variant was in Belgium. Before the weekend was out, Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Italy and other countries had all found cases. But in the United States, scientists kept […]
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New ‘Omicron’ Variant Stokes Concern but Vaccines May Still Work
Scientific experts at the World Health Organization warned on Friday that a new coronavirus variant discovered in southern Africa was a “variant of concern,” the most serious category the agency uses for such tracking. The designation, announced after an emergency meeting of the health body, is reserved for dangerous variants that may spread quickly, cause […]
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