BioNews - Dr Aarathi Prasad

Dr Aarathi Prasad

Dr Aarathi Prasad is a Volunteer Writer at BioNews, and Life Sciences Adviser to the British Council. She is a science writer and broadcaster, and has presented and written for programmes including Is It Better to Be Mixed Race?, the Health and Biology episodes of Brave New World with Stephen Hawking, and the 4thought film Should We Raise Children in Mixed Marriages? on Channel 4, and The Quest for Virgin Birth on BBC Radio 4. She has written for publications including the Guardian and Telegraph newspapers, Prospect and Wired magazines, and Euroscientist, and she has judged the Science and Natural History category in the Royal Television Society's Programme Awards. She has a PhD in Mammalian Cell Cycle Biology from Imperial College London, and she has completed a postdoctoral project supported by Cancer Research UK, which used chemical genetics to identify early therapeutic targets in cancers. She was previously Public Liaison Officer at Sense About Science and Parliamentary Researcher for Evan Harris. She is currently writing a book entitled The End of Sex: The Quest for Reproduction without Men, and she tweets as @AarathiPrasad

BioNews Comment articles written by Dr Aarathi Prasad:

Progress Educational Trust conference - Cross-border reproductive care: a problem or a solution?

20 December 2010 - by Dr Aarathi Prasad

The final session of the Progress Education Trust's 'Passport to Parenthood' conference debated whether the facility to receive treatment outside of a patient's home country presents a genuine solution to meeting the growing demand for fertility care - or whether it generates new problems of its own....[Read More]

Epigenetics: responding to life by switching genes on and off

07 December 2009 - by Dr Aarathi Prasad

Session 3 of the Progress Educational Trust's annual conference (PET), held on Wednesday 18 November 2009 at Clifford Chance, was chaired by Professor Dian Donnai,Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Manchester, and started with a talk by Karen Temple, Professor of Medical Genetics and Honorary Consultant in Clinical Genetics at the University of Southampton and Wessex Clinical Genetics Service. Professor Temple gave an intriguing talk on the influence of parent...[Read More]

BioNews News articles written by Dr Aarathi Prasad:

Working together: Is it really in your genes?

29 November 2010 - by Dr Aarathi Prasad

Researchers at Edinburgh University's department of psychology report that there is a biological mechanism underpinning the loyalty that a person feels to their social group....[Read More]

Emotional cost of bullying made worse by genetic makeup, experts claim

02 August 2010 - by Dr Aarathi Prasad

Scientists have found evidence to support a relationship between genetic make-up and emotional response to childhood bullying....[Read More]

Gene activity linked to heart disease

18 January 2010 - by Dr Aarathi Prasad

A new study by scientists at the University of Cambridge, UK, has indicated that people in the later stages of heart disease carry specific changes in three key genes. However, these alterations to the genes are not permanent mutations, rather, they consist of a reversible change that may be influenced by the environment and diet, and may be responsible for integrating lifestyle and dietary signals to later heart failure....[Read More]

Stem-cell lines neglect ethnic minorities

21 December 2009 - by Dr Aarathi Prasad

A recent letter to the New England Journal of Medicine has investigated the genetic ancestry of the most commonly used and widely distributed embryonic stem cell (ES) lines currently used in research, and highlighted the dearth of lines that originate from non-European populations....[Read More]

Statin gene test could reveal patients prone to harmful side-effects

28 September 2009 - by Dr Aarathi Prasad

A new NHS-funded study will test patients for genes that may play a key role in side-effects related to statin use....[Read More]