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 ...

Plasmids, small circular DNA molecules found in bacteria, may contain antibiotic-resistance genes and have the ability to replicate independently. Bacteria can transfer these plasmids to one another, ...

DNA's iconic double helix does more than "just" store genetic information. Under certain conditions it can temporarily fold into unusual shapes.

Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has enabled researchers to study how the DNA replication machinery assembles at sites where DNA is damaged. Cellular DNA is continuously exposed to both ...

Most cancer cells have genomes that are much less methylated than those of normal cells, but whether this loss of methylation, an epigenetic process, has any functional meaning for the cells has long ...

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 ...

DNA is often likened to a blueprint. The particular sequence of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts in DNA provides information for building an organism. What’s not captured by this analogy is the fact that our DNA ...

Estrogen is known as an important hormone, and it can control many cellular and bodily functions by regulating the activity of hundreds of genes. Scientists have now learned more about how estrogen ...

In May 1952, Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling captured Photo 51, a crucial X-ray diffraction image revealing DNA's ...

James Watson, a Nobel laureate and former director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), died Nov. 6 at the age of 97. Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Francis ...