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 ...

Researchers have mapped the spatial distribution of around 700 long non-coding RNAs, otherwise known as lncRNAs, in the testes. The team discovered much higher levels of lncRNAs in the testes than had ...

Professor Indraneel Mittra and his team show that DNA fragments from dying cells function as agents of horizontal gene transfer in mammalian cells. For decades, scientists have known that bacteria can ...

Butterfly wing patterns have a basic plan to them, which is manipulated by non-coding regulatory DNA to create the diversity of wings seen in different species, according to new research. Butterfly ...

The human genome contains about 20,000 protein-coding genes, but that only accounts for roughly two percent of the genome. For many years, it was easier for scientists to simply ignore all of that ...

Butterfly wing patterns have a basic plan to them, which is manipulated by non-coding regulatory DNA to create the diversity of wings seen in different species, according to new research. The study, ...

De novo gene evolution describes the process by which entirely new genes originate from previously non-coding DNA rather than from the duplication and divergence of existing genetic material. This ...

Imagine the human genome as a string stretching out for the length of a football field, with all the genes that encode proteins clustered at the end near your feet. Take two big steps forward; all the ...

When the Human Genome Project published the first draft of the human genome sequence in 2001, many researchers expected to be able to pinpoint protein alterations that would explain the distinctive ...

Photograph of an Adélie penguin breeding colony, Edmonson Point, Antarctica. Adélie penguin nests consist of a shallow scrape, pebbles, and bones. Credit: Carlo Baroni and Maria Cristina Salvatore, ...