The silence of the genes

In July 2024 a startling scientific paper was published.Headlined ‘Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor’, scientists told how they had discovered oxygen being made two and a half miles down, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.Their claim centred on small pol ...  Show more

The rapid spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria is already claiming lives - and a far greater global crisis is on the horizon.In this three part series for Discovery, reporter Roland Pease traces how we reached this point, uncovers the forces driving resistance ever faster, and ...  Show more

The future is here. Gene silencing medicines - which can fine tune how our DNA works - have held promise for decades. Now hundreds of thousands of people will get them in the UK. James speaks to a surgeon whose life and career have been saved by gene-silencing drugs and to resear ...  Show more

Last week, a girl who was born deaf had her hearing restored following gene therapy. In the US, the first commercial gene therapy for sickle cell disease has just begun. And Great Ormond Street Hospital has found great success in their trials and a gene therapy for children lacki ...  Show more

The Prime Minister has announced his desire for the UK to become a 'science superpower'. A new office within the cabinet to look at science will work alongside existing science strategy and funding structures. So far it's unclear where the responsibilities between the various sci ...  Show more

Our genes can tell us so much about us, from why we look the way we look, think the way we think, even what kind of diseases we might be likely to suffer from. But our genes aren't the whole story. There are other, complex and intriguing systems within every cell in our bodies wh ...  Show more