Only a few years ago, Tuesday’s announcement that a glove believed to be connected to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie in Tucson, Arizona, had no match in a DNA database would have been a dead end.

DNA, the blueprint of life, is best known for its fundamental role as genetic material—storing and transmitting biological information through the precise sequence of its bases. For decades, this ...

Gene therapy holds the promise of preventing and curing disease by manipulating gene expression within a patient's cells. However, to be effective, the new gene must make it into a cell's nucleus. The ...

In 1869, Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher isolated a mysterious substance from cell nuclei—an overlooked finding that would later reshape biology and our understanding of life itself. A ...

DNA's iconic double helix does more than "just" store genetic information. Under certain conditions it can temporarily fold into unusual shapes. Researchers at Umeå University, Sweden, have now shown ...

The human genome has to be carefully organized so it will fit inside of the nuclei of cells, while also remaining accessible to the cellular machinery that works to express the right genes at the ...

Researchers suggest that they have recovered sequences from ancient works and from letters that may belong to the Renaissance genius. Historical artifacts can accumulate DNA from the environment and ...

Colibactin is a powerful toxin produced by Escherichia coli and other bacteria living in the human gut. This highly unstable bacterial product causes mutations in DNA that have been linked to ...

Scientists have created a live-cell DNA sensor that reveals how damage appears and disappears inside living cells, capturing the entire repair sequence as it unfolds. Instead of freezing cells at ...

Francis Crick missed a crucial seminar in 1951, probably because he was seeing a lover. James Watson did go, failed to take notes and misremembered key details. As a result, their first model of DNA ...

James D. Watson, whose co-discovery of the twisted-ladder structure of DNA in 1953 helped light the long fuse on a revolution in medicine, crimefighting, genealogy and ethics, has died. He was 97. The ...