Month: November 2018

Why genetics makes some people more vulnerable to opioid addiction – and protects others

By Jerry McManus 0 Comment November 25, 2018

Every day, 91 Americans die from an opioid overdose. Rates of abuse of these drugs have shot up over the past 15 years and continue to climb. Why is this happening? Is there hope for helping individuals with opioid addiction? From a scientific standpoint, addiction is a disease. And, as researchers who study opioid addiction, we’re hopeful about where epigenetics, […]

Genes could record forensic clues to time of death

By Jerry McManus 0 Comment November 16, 2018

Dying, it turns out, is not like flipping a switch. Genes keep working for a while after a person dies, and scientists have used that activity in the lab to pinpoint time of death to within about nine minutes. During the first 24 hours after death, genetic changes kick in across various human tissues, creating patterns […]

A second look at twin studies

By Jerry McManus 0 Comment November 12, 2018

More than a century after Galton’s observation, twin studies remain a favorite tool of behavioral geneticists. Researchers have used twin studies to try to disentangle the environmental and genetic backgrounds of a cornucopia of traits, from aggression to intelligence to schizophrenia to alcohol dependence. But despite the popularity of twin studies, some psychologists have long […]

The genetic breakthrough that could change humanity, explained

By Jerry McManus 0 Comment November 5, 2018

What is CRISPR? It’s a revolutionary gene-editing technique that enables scientists to snip out a piece of any organism’s DNA cheaply, quickly, and precisely — cutting and editing the code of life the way a film editor would splice an old film reel. Developed at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2012, CRISPR offers great […]