Shelby Bradford, PhD

Shelby Bradford, PhD

Assistant editor at Labx Media Group

Shelby is an Assistant Editor at The Scientist. She earned her PhD in immunology and microbial pathogenesis from West Virginia University, where she studied neonatal responses to vaccination. She completed an AAAS Mass Media Fellowship at StateImpact Pennsylvania, and her writing has also appeared in Massive Science. Shelby participated in the 2023 flagship ComSciCon and volunteered with science outreach programs and Carnegie Science Center during graduate school. 

Articles by Shelby Bradford, PhD

3D illustration of a blue, transparent human silhouette with a light yellow brain visible in their skull on a blue background with a gold DNA strand running behind them.

How Brain Gene Expression Changes Between Life and Death

A brown dog stares at a spoon of peanut butter in front of its face with wide eyes.

Why Do Dogs Love Peanut Butter?

Photograph of a herd of brown chickens against a blue sky with clouds.

Antimicrobial Peptides Stave Off Salmonella in Chickens

Illustration of four people seated at a table with pads of paper and laptop on it. A woman on the left of the table in a red shirt, depicting senior staff writer Emma Dauster, has a speech bubble over her head with a picture depicting a shark and orca with “vs” in between them, showing an idea for a video on battles between apex predators.

Sparking Curiosity Through Science Communication

Illustration representing the finding of distinct gene associations and their risk in obesity from people of different ancestries. A global map is shown in blue with red and black human silhouettes arranged on the continents, representing people with and without gene mutations for obesity. A red and black loop of DNA is twisted around the world in a figure eight pattern.

A Multi-Ancestry Analysis Reveals Novel Obesity-Related Genes

Representative image of travel bans. One the left are silhouettes of human faces in colors ranging from cream to tan to brown. A hand extending from the right is held up in a “stop” signal in front of them in the middle of the image.

US Could Lose 7 Billion Dollars and Invaluable Research Talent if International Student Enrollments Drop

Cartoon illustration of a human cell with pink and purple proteins underneath a blue virus with light blue stalk proteins on an indigo background.

Integral HIV Protein Structure Paves the Way for New Therapeutics

Depiction of circadian rhythm with clock hands on top of a white cutout of a human head on a yellow background.

How Does Daylight Saving Time Affect Circadian Rhythm?

3D illustration of a human mouth with oversized blue, comma-shaped bacteria and green, spiked viruses overlayed on the tongue and teeth. This is representing the oral microbiome.

How Does Sugar Affect Our Oral Microbiome and Teeth?

Cartoon illustration of a scientist wearing a lab coat and safety goggles shows off the science of a volcano to a group of students wearing safety goggles standing on either side of him

Science Outreach Brings STEM to Communities—But It Also Benefits Researchers

Photograph of the bottom half of a man’s face while he sings into a microphone.

Metal Vocalists Scream for Science

Illustration in blue of a brain on the right and a bottle, glass of wine, shot glass, and whiskey glass on the right. Conceptual illustration of alcohol use disorder.

A Common Gut Fungus Coaxes Mice to Drink Less Alcohol

Image of a woman with her hands across her stomach. She has a look of discomfort on her face. There is a blown up image of her stomach next to her and it has colorful butterflies and gut bacteria all swarming within the gut.
November 2025, Issue 1

Why Do We Feel Butterflies in the Stomach?

These fluttering sensations are the brain’s reaction to certain emotions, which can be amplified or soothed by the gut’s own “bugs".

View this Issue

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Olga Anczukow and Ryan Englander discuss how transcriptome splicing affects immune system function in lung cancer.

Long-Read RNA Sequencing Reveals a Regulatory Role for Splicing in Immunotherapy Responses

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Research Roundtable: The Evolving World of Spatial Biology

Research Roundtable: The Evolving World of Spatial Biology

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Exploring the State of the Art in Gene Editing Techniques

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Conceptual image of a doctor holding a brain puzzle, representing Alzheimer's disease diagnosis.

Simplifying Early Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnosis with Blood Testing

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