December 2024 Newsletter

Thank you to everyone who has supported our mission in 2024 to expand awareness and dialogue about genetics. Whether you joined us for an event, used our lessons, collaborated on a project, provided financial support, or simply joined us in conversation, we are grateful to you.

Wishing you a joyous holiday season!
Gill, Marnie, Rob, Robin, and Ting

Marnie and Ting enjoyed lively conversations with students at Boston Day & Evening Academy in Roxbury. Many thanks to the amazing teaching duo of Nilo Ashraf, who hosted Robin last year, and Fabienne Mondesir (a PGED alum!) for hosting us in “The Story in Our Genes” course during Project Month at BDEA. Students had lots of questions for Ting about “weird stuff” in genetics and shared thoughtful insights about genetics applications – from ancestry to health to the environment – through playing PGED’s Share Your Stance on Personal Genetics card game. Thanks to all for a memorable and inspiring visit! We hope the cards continue to be a spark for conersation in future classes. 

PGED has joined Bluesky! We’re excited to share resources, announcements, and events regularly on Bluesky in 2025. We hope you’ll connect with us there!

@pged.bsky.social 

PGED’s Community Spotlight series showcases some of the remarkable people we’ve connected with through our mission to expand education and dialogue about genetics, health, and society. You can find all of our current and future Spotlights on our website!

Gill met with Alison & Dale Batie to learn how they bring personal genetics into their science and social studies classrooms in South Dakota.

Read their Community Spotlight to learn more.

Did you know PGED has video recordings of some of our most popular lessons? Our lesson recordings can be played during class as a video presentation, used to accompany a homework assignment, or viewed for curiosity. Whatever your reasoning, you can access all of our video lessons on the PGED website by applying the resource type filter for ‘videos’ in our Resource Hub.

Interview: How genetically engineered mice could stop the spread of Lyme disease (Radio Boston). “New England has some of the highest rates of Lyme disease in the country. MIT researchers are trying to fight the disease in a project that involves releasing hundreds of thousands of engineered mice onto the shores of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.”

Article: This father built a gene therapy for his son. Now comes the harder part: saving others’ children, too (STAT). “When the Lockhard family was thrust into the bewildering world of ultra-rare disease, they found their way to someone they hoped could help, Terry Pirovolakis.”

Article: Alabama Woman Receives Nation’s Third Pig Kidney Transplant (New York Times). “The patient, Towana Looney, was in better health than previous recipients, and her case could signal progress toward solving the organ-supply shortage.”

Article: For kids with rare genetic disorders, customized CRISPR treatments offer hope (NPR). The gene-editing technique is effective for treating some illnesses but it’s been too expensive to consider it for rare conditions. A new approach in the works could make it more widely available.

Article: Oldest Human Genomes Reveal How a Small Group Burst Out of Africa (New York Times). “DNA from European fossils dating back 45,000 years offers new clues to how our species spread across the world.”

Are You a Fan of Our Free Resources? PGED expands the dialogue on personal genetics by creating free lesson plans, videos, conversation guides, and more. 

Please consider making a gift to PGED to help us keep our resources free. 

We are grateful for any contribution you wish to make.

PGED is always looking for opportunities to engage with new audiences. Would you like to host a group to talk about the implications of personal genetics? What about a professional development workshop for teachers in your district?

We have staff in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Washington, DC – and we are willing to travel when possible. Contact us to find out about scheduling an event in your area!