The other day I used Post-it notes to organize my ideas for the last chapter of my book about heredity. On the one hand, getting to this point feels good: Last chapter! Lots of ideas! On the other hand, you readers probably won’t be happy with a pile of Post-it notes at the end of my book. So…I’m busy.
Since the last Friday’s Elk, I’ve published a couple columns for the New York Times. Recently, a group of scientists published a review about the emerging science of making embryo-like…things. They’re not eggs fertilized by sperm. They’re reprogrammed stem cells that, when combined with each other, start to develop embryo-like features. We can learn a lot from them. But how far should we let them go? Here’s my look at the ethics of this brave new world.
In another column, I wrote about the deep history of Australia. People arrived in Australia well over 40,000 years ago, judging by their skeletons and artifacts. In recent years, geneticists have also been finding clues to their history, in the DNA of living Aboriginal Australians. I wrote about a new study that suggests the first Australians arrived around 50,000 years ago, spread quickly around the perimeter of the continent, and then pretty much stayed put. There was no major mixing of the regional populations once they settled down. You can read about the study here.
Finally, Stanford Medicine published a nice piece on the talk I gave there earlier this month about looking at my genome.
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Best wishes, Carl
Originally published March 25, 2017. Copyright 2017 Carl Zimmer.