DNA

Can Knitting Help Teach Science?

A Cell Biologist Reflects on the Connections Between Stitches and STEM

Hands stitching a blue pattern that looks like DNA.

When I was about 8 years old, my grandmother took me to a local fabric store to pick out a pattern for a dress we could sew together. Piecing together the brown pattern paper, cutting out fabric, and learning to pin and hem, I felt like I was solving the ultimate wearable puzzle.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was also preparing for my PhD in cell biophysics—the study of how cells, and the structures within them, move and grow. Cells form, and interact with, the squishy, …

by Megan Chong |

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Do Genes Really Determine Your Hobbies, Relationships, and Voting Habits?

Science and Pop Culture Make DNA Seem All-Important, But Nurture Still Matters as Much as Nature

by Catherine Bliss |

Over the past 25 years, we’ve become surprisingly comfortable with the idea that genes play a large role in our lives. When DNA is in the mix, people assume that …

Consciousness Isn’t About the Mind, It’s About the Body

Thinking and Feeling Are the Products of the Brain's Physical Architecture

By Michael S. Gazzaniga |

Many students of the mind have observed that consciousness—as a word or as a concept—is a placeholder, a suitcase word for multiple processes in our brains. Those processes are systems …

Designer DNA Isn’t Just for ‘Designer Babies’

Dystopian Imagery Makes It Hard to Assess the Perils and Promise of Gene Editing

By Katie Hasson |

When we talk about gene editing technology, we often talk about—but almost never deeply consider—the concept of designer babies. Consider this article in The New York Times, titled “Gene Editing …

Resurrection Biology

by Laura Orem |

Bring out the dead–the passenger
pigeon and Carolina parakeet,
the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo,
the mammoth still sleeping
in icy Neolithic dreams.

Unspool them in ribbons and splice
the shredded places …


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