National Geographic Magazine - UK June 2025

IF YOU, like me, are searching for hopeful stories these days, look no further than this issue’s cover feature, which explores the evolving science of xeno-transplantation: the transfer of animal material, especially organs, to humans. While not a new idea, this practice has made remarkable strides in just the past year, thanks to a trifecta of pioneering biotech companies, forward-thinking doctors and their medical institutions, and uncommonly brave patients. Specifically, genetically modified kidneys from pigs have been successfully transplanted into people, raising the promise that there may soon be a new, viable option for the tens of thousands of patients each year in the United States alone who need an organ but cannot find a donor. It’s a story that is at once fascinating and emotional and, I promise, well…

LIVELIHOODS “Strength, freedom, and LOVE FOR THE SEA. Khajoou embodies them all, floating freely on the water, looking like she’s not afraid of anything.” COMMUNITY “The Friday night rodeos are an AUTHENTIC glimpse of the rural mountain life I knew as a kid—from bull riding to singing the national anthem to eating cotton candy.” ARCHAEOLOGY “When SUNFISH found something interesting, it would come back to the boat to guide the team back to the spot. It spent the rest of the time as our DIVE BUDDY and communication link to the surface.” NATURE “Lake Magadi’s mineral deposits create a spectacle of incredible shapes: lacelike spirals, shells, and whirls. But after storms roll in, the formations VANISH beneath the water, awaiting their next transformation.” SPORT “I started attending HIGHLAND GAMES with the…

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORERS These contributors have received funding from the National Geographic Society, which is committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world. Learn more about the Society’s support of Explorers at natgeo.com/impact. Ronan Donovan, p.78 To photograph this month’s feature on beavers’ ecological footprint, Donovan visited landscapes shaped by the underappreciated animals in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and his home state of Montana, where he lives in Bozeman. A field biologist by training, he has also shot for Audubon, the New York Times Magazine, and Modern Huntsman. M’hammed Kilito, p.52 An Explorer since 2020, Kilito photographed oases in Morocco and Saudi Arabia for this month’s story on the threatened desert areas. Kilito lives in Rabat, Morocco, and his work has been published in the Atlantic, El Pais, and…

The entry requirements should have come with an instruction booklet: Sign in at the security hut. Shoes off at the door. Over to the locker room for a hot shower. Into a long protective surgical smock and knee-high rubber waders, and finally, a pair of safety goggles, which—in the clammy heat of the laboratory complex—quickly began to fog. “Sorry for the trouble,” smiled my tour guide, Bjöern Petersen, waving me forward. “We just have to be exceptionally careful about pathogens. You’ll get used to it, I promise.” A couple of hours earlier, I’d awoken in a hotel in a Midwestern city I’ve been asked not to name. Now, with the sun curdling above the surrounding pasture and a gauze of mist in the air, I found myself following Petersen, a German-born…

1 Evaluate a tissue sample A specimen from the ear of a Yucatan pig is carefully reviewed, or sequenced, to ensure there are no issues that will interfere with the gene-editing process. 2 Delete problematic pig genes Using the gene-editing technology CRISPR, eGenesis scientists must alter the tissue sample to prevent the spread of viral disease and potential organ rejection. That means removing four pig-specific genes. 3 Make it more human Scientists then insert seven human genes into the sample’s DNA that will protect the future kidney from inflammation, cell damage, and coagulation—and also trick the human immune system into accepting the foreign organ. 4 Insert the modified DNA The edited DNA is then fused with the nuclei of fetal pig cells. Scientists implant these developing embryos into a sow…

BENEATH SEA URCHINS’ exterior spines, rounded skeletons called tests are jewels of color, texture, and symmetry. There are hundreds of urchin species, and they’re found in every ocean on Earth, from the intertidal zone to more than four miles below the surface. In 2018, Anders Hallan, a research associate at the Australian Museum in Sydney, began photographing urchin skeletons that had washed up on beaches or been collected by divers and those on fishing or research vessels. He created the composite image at left over the course of a week in 2024 using 76 individual photographs. The project comes at a perilous moment for these creatures. Since 2022, sea urchins have been plagued by a scuticociliate, a single-celled pathogen that eats away at the animals’ soft tissue and makes their…