Last week, Indian pediatrician Soumya Swaminathan announced on Twitter that she is leaving her post as chief scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) at the end of this month. She plans to return to India to work on public health there. Swaminathan, 63, joined WHO in 2017 and in March 2019 was named the agency’s first chief scientist, a position created...
The celebrated gene-editing tool CRISPR started out as a bacterial defense against invading viruses. But it turns out the intended targets have stolen CRISPR for their own arsenals. A new study reveals that thousands of the bacteria-attacking viruses known as bacteriophages (phages, for short) contain the CRISPR system’s genetic sequences, suggesting they may deploy them against rival...
The indictment of several members of an alleged international monkey smuggling ring is sending ripples through the U.S. biomedical community. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged two Cambodian wildlife officials and several members of a Hong Kong-based primate supply company with illegally exporting hundreds—and potentially more than 2000— cynomolgus...