A routine experiment with a new single-cell DNA sequencing method turned into a surprising scientific twist when researchers stumbled upon a bizarre genetic code in a microscopic pond organism.

Multicellular organisms (animals, plants, humans) all have the ability to methylate the cytosine base in their DNA. This process, a type of epigenetic modification, plays an important role in ...

In a giant feat of genetic engineering, scientists have created bacteria that make proteins in a radically different way than all natural species do. By Carl Zimmer At the heart of all life is a code.

Mayo Clinic researchers have identified a protein that acts like a traffic controller for DNA, preventing damage during cell division - a discovery that could lead to new cancer therapies, according ...

DNA is often called the blueprint of life, but what does that really mean? Elizabeth Worthey, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Genetics in the Heersink School of Medicine, explains everything ...

Decades of research has viewed DNA as a sequence-based instruction manual; yet every cell in the body shares the same genes – so where is the language that writes the memory of cell identities?

New work shows that physical folding of the genome to control genes located far away may have been a critical turning point for life on Earth. For evolutionary biologists, what most distinguishes the ...