Daily briefing: DNA points to the cradle of humanity

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Snipers and drones to fend off deadly pig virus

South Korea has mobilized military snipers and drones along the demilitarized zone between itself and North Korea to stave off wild boars carrying African swine fever. The country is the latest to report cases of the highly contagious and lethal virus in pigs, which has wiped out tens of millions of the animals across Asia.

Nature | 3 min read

Tuberculosis vaccine could save half of cases

The final analysis of a promising clinical trial of a vaccine against tuberculosis (TB) shows it keeps the infection dormant about half the time. After three years, a trial involving more than 3,500 HIV-negative adults with latent TB found only 13 developed active TB, compared to 26 who received a placebo. That might not sound impressive compared to vaccines like the one for measles, which is about 98% protective. But TB is the world’s most deadly infectious killer, and the current prevention method involves taking a lot of antibiotics.

The New York Times | 6 min read

Reference: The New England Journal of Medicine paper

DNA points to the cradle of humanity

Homo sapiens evolved in a vast wetland that once covered what is now northern Botswana, and stayed there for around 70,000 years before beginning our outward migrations. That’s the finding based on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of 200 people from rarely studied groups in southern Africa, including some who have the oldest mtDNA known in living people.

Critics of the work aren’t convinced that the mtDNA of a couple of hundred living people is enough to make such bold claims about our species’ real-life Garden of Eden. “It tells us very little about human origins as a whole,” says geneticist Carina Schlebusch. “It only tells us about the origin of a very small part of the human genome, and nothing more.”

The Atlantic | 7 min read

Reference: Nature paper

If the news of Google’s quantum supremacy milestone has left you hovering halfway between confusion and comprehension, try our 3-minute video explaining the whole darn thing.

Features & opinion

“We must all be ethicists now”

From the dawn of eugenics to gene-edited ‘CRISPR babies’, bioethics has gone from unfit for purpose to professionalized and back again, argues sociologist Sarah Franklin. “The stereotype of bureaucratic, box-ticking ethical compliance is no longer fit for purpose in a world of CRISPR twins, synthetic neurons and self-driving cars,” says Franklin.

Nature | 13 min read

This is the sixth of a series of essays on the roots of today’s research system. Read why, on Nature’s 150th anniversary, we’re looking back to learn how to navigate the present.

Your community engagement starter pack

Sick of seeing well-intentioned mental-health interventions left to gather dust, health researcher Karen Fortuna was determined to bring people with lived experiences of psychiatric conditions to the table. The result was a successful peer-delivered programme — and a framework for community engagement with vulnerable populations. Read her advice on how to master co-produced research.

Nature | 6 min read

Gender-recognition technology is rubbish

“When a technology assumes that men have short hair, we call it a bug,” writes technology researcher Os Keyes. “But when that technology becomes normalized, pretty soon we start to call long-haired men a bug.” Keyes argues that the malign consequences of automated gender-recognition technology means we should chuck the whole thing in the bin — along with all facial recognition systems.

Logic | 9 min read

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