The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of biology. They carry genetic material, but they cannot make proteins on ...

By simulating the life cycle of a minimal bacterial cell—from DNA replication to protein translation to metabolism and cell ...

The DNA packed inside every human cell contains instructions for life, written in billions of letters of genetic code. Every time a cell divides, the complete code, divided among 46 chromosomes, must ...

A giant DNA virus pulled from a Japanese freshwater pond is forcing scientists to rethink how complex cells first acquired their defining feature: the nucleus. Named ushikuvirus, the newly ...

Embryonic stem (ES) cells are pluripotent stem cells that can produce all cell types of an organism. ES cells proliferate rapidly and have been thought to experience high levels of intrinsic ...

Humans and baker's yeast have more in common than meets the eye, including an important mechanism that helps ensure DNA is copied correctly, reports a pair of studies. The findings visualize for the ...

A fleeting DNA fold called i‑DNA can switch cancer‑related genes on and off, revealing a hidden structural weak point that ...

A team of researchers at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center has identified a new pathway through which mutations in the tumor suppressor p53 gene—found very frequently in human tumors—hijack DNA ...