For decades, biologists have known that the instructions for life are written in DNA, yet the vast majority of those letters seemed to sit in the dark, doing little that was obvious. Now a new ...

Not all parts of our genetic code are equal, even when they appear to say the same thing. Scientists have discovered that cells can detect less efficient genetic instructions and selectively silence ...

A graphical representation of how cis-regulatory elements work to turn genes on or off and open possibilities for personalized medicine. Researchers at The Jackson Laboratory (JAX), the Broad ...

Scientists testing a new method of sequencing single cells have unexpectedly changed our understanding of the rules of genetics. The genome of a protist has revealed a seemingly unique divergence in ...

Since the genetic code was first deciphered in the 1960s, our genes seemed like an open book. By reading and decoding our chromosomes as linear strings of letters, like sentences in a novel, we can ...

Every cell in the human body squeezes over six feet of DNA into a minuscule speck invisible to the naked eye—like compressing ...

The study, authored by Tripti Midha, Anatoly Kolomeisky and Oleg Igoshin and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Every living cell must interpret its genetic code — a ...