The human genetic blueprint is deceptively simple. Our genes are tightly wound into 46 X-shaped structures called chromosomes. Crafted by evolution, they carry DNA and replicate when cells divide, ...

Among the many marvels of life is the cell's ability to divide and thus enable organisms to grow and renew themselves. For this, the cell must duplicate its DNA—its genome—and segregate it equally ...

Scientists have discovered a new property of the molecular motors that shape our chromosomes. While six years ago they found that these so-called SMC motor proteins make long loops in our DNA, they ...

How does DNA recombination work? It occurs frequently in many different cell types, and it has important implications for genomic integrity, evolution, and human disease. In the alternate pathway ...

The central area of chromosomes, the centromere, contains DNA that has survived largely unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years, researchers at UC Davis and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have ...

There are only so many ways to cram DNA into a cell’s nucleus, a study suggests. A cell’s complete genetic blueprint, or genome, is densely packed into chromosomes, condensing meters of DNA into a ...

Genes get shuffled and re-dealt with every new generation, meaning many are relatively recent. But while exploring the "dark heart" of the human genome, geneticists have now found some of the most ...

Scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have, for the first time, identified the exact location where human chromosomes break and fuse to form Robertsonian chromosomes. The discovery ...

Depending on the setting, the ability of a crucial bacterium in biotechnology—Agrobacterium tumefaciens—to transfer its DNA ...