Genetic elements called Mavericks that have some viral features could be responsible for the large-scale smuggling of DNA between species. Biologists have understood the broad contours of the rules of ...

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Even as humpbacks rebound in number, their genomes reveal a loss of genetic diversity and a buildup of harmful mutations left ...

But some Neanderthal DNA helped modern humans survive and reproduce, and thus it has lingered in our genomes. Nowadays, ...

A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of complex cells aren’t all equally stuffed with noncoding sequences. All animals, plants, fungi and protists — which collectively make up ...

Structural variations (SVs)—large-scale changes in DNA sequence—play a crucial role in shaping traits such as yield, quality, and environmental adaptation in crops.

It's long been assumed that as cells divide in the human body, the genome is faithfully replicated in the resulting daughter cells. While errors are known to arise, there is machinery in the cell that ...

Twenty-two years after the completion of the Human Genome Project, scientists have unveiled the most expansive catalog of human genetic variation ever compiled. Across two new papers published ...

The 20 th century was dubbed ‘the century of the gene’. You could say it started with the coining of the word ‘gene’ in 1903. Fifty years later, James Watson and Francis Crick used Rosalind Franklin’s ...

(THE CONVERSATION) Dogs were the first of any species that people domesticated, and they have been a constant part of human life for millennia. Domesticated species are the plants and animals that ...