How Health and Lifestyle Choices Can Change Your Genetic Make-Up

Research in the new field of epigenetics is finding that our lifestyle choices -- the foods we put in our bodies, the chemicals we are exposed to, how active we opt to be, even our social environments -- can actually alter our health at the level of the gene.

Do your genes determine your entire life?

Some scientists claim that new discoveries have proved free will is an illusion. Nonsense, says Julian Baggini

A Creative Force in Understanding Genes

Edith Heard grew up wanting to be a musician and is now an expert in epigenetics.

Do Your Genes Know What’s Making You Sick?

Testing for immune-system changes, rather than for the presence of a virus, could give an earlier indication of whether people are ill.

Genes Don't Cause Racial-Health Disparities, Society Does

Researchers are looking in the wrong place: White people live longer not because of their DNA but because of inequality.

Genes May Leave Some People More Vulnerable to Severe Covid-19

Geneticists have turned up intriguing links between DNA and the disease. Patients with Type A blood, for example, seem to be at greater risk.

How do genes impact health and disease?

Do you have the same eye and hair color as many of your family members? The same thing can happen with diseases—they can be passed down from one family member to another. The way this happens is through genes, the genetic information that you get directly from your parents. In most cases, diseases or other problems do not have one single cause. They come from a combination of your genes, your choices, and your environment.

How scientists are learning to predict your future with your genes

In the years since the Human Genome Project, geneticists have learned that many of the traits that make you you arise from a stunningly complex constellation of genes — numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands — that interact with each other, the body, and the environment in incredibly complex ways.

Our Fortunetelling Genes

A new tool for analyzing hundreds of thousands of small genetic differences can predict a range of psychological attributes from birth. It will transform how we see ourselves, our capacities and our problems.

Scientists are finding more genes linked to IQ. This doesn’t mean we can predict intelligence

Researchers using huge data sets to understand genetics and behavior worry their findings will be misinterpreted.

The genes behind your fingerprints just got weirder

The whorls, arches, and loops on your fingertips can say a lot about your early development.

The Genes That Never Go Out of Style

It’s possible, of course, that scientists have already identified all the really important genes, and are allocating their attention appropriately. There are good reasons, for example, why p53 is the most popular human gene: It protects our cells from cancer, and is itself mutated in half of all tumors. More broadly, Stoeger found that compared to the least popular genes, the most popular ones are three to five times more likely to have been linked to diseases in large studies, or to wreak havoc when they accrue incapacitating mutations.

The Nobel-Prize-Winning Chemist Who Pioneered Gene Editing

Dr. Jennifer Doudna, who discovered CRISPR’s gene-editing power, wants the technology to be standard of care for severe genetic diseases.

The Power Of Genes, And The Line Between Biology And Destiny

As researchers work to understand the human genome, many questions remain, including, perhaps, the most fundamental: Just how much of the human experience is determined before we are already born, by our genes, and how much is dependent upon external environmental factors?

To Move Is to Thrive. It’s in Our Genes

A need and desire to be in motion may have been bred into our DNA before we even became humans.

What Could Your Genes Reveal About Your Future Health?

Meet Anne Wojcicki, the entrepreneur who wants to give us all access to our genetic info.

What If (Almost) Every Gene Affects (Almost) Everything?

Three Stanford scientists have proposed a provocative new way of thinking about genetic variants, and how they affect people’s bodies and health.

What you eat can reprogram your genes – an expert explains the emerging science of nutrigenomics

People typically think of food as calories, energy and sustenance. However, the latest evidence suggests that food also “talks” to our genome, which is the genetic blueprint that directs the way the body functions down to the cellular level. This communication between food and genes may affect your health, physiology and longevity. The idea that food delivers important messages to an animal’s genome is the focus of a field known as nutrigenomics.

You Are Shaped by the Genes You Inherit. And Maybe by Those You Don’t

For centuries, people have drawn the line between nature and nurture. In the nineteenth century, the English polymath Francis Galton cast nature-versus-nurture in scientific terms. He envisioned a battle between heredity and experience that shapes each of us. “When nature and nurture compete for supremacy…the former proves the stronger,” Galton wrote in 1874.

Your Likelihood of a Happy Marriage May Depend on Your Genes

Marriage success: hard work AND good genes? Do you ever feel like relationships are just harder for you than they are for other people? I do sometimes, but probably I'm just being a drama queen. However, thanks to this new study, I'm totally gonna blame it on my genetics from now on.