Fargo, ND, is probably better known for its blizzards, floods, and eponymous TV series than its biotechnological prowess. Yet for the past 25 years, Aldevron, a manufacturer of DNA, RNA, and proteins, ...

This image illustrates the chemical structure of a purine molecule, highlighting the numbering of the carbon and nitrogen atoms. The purine structure consists of a pyrimidine ring (positions 1 to 6) ...

Francesca Storici consults at Tessera Therapeutics. She has received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Your DNA is continually damaged by sources both ...

Many writers grouse when an editor makes a change in a story, but the consequences of changing a single word usually aren’t that dire. Not so with genetic instructions for making proteins. Even a ...

Our genes contain all the instructions our body needs to function, but their expression must be finely regulated to guarantee that each cell performs its role optimally. This is where DNA and RNA ...

Thomas Gingeras did not intend to upend basic ideas about how the human body works. In 2012 the geneticist, now at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York State, was one of a few hundred colleagues ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In 1957, just four years after Francis Crick and other scientists solved the riddle of ...