A four-letter alphabet might seem limited, but it’s all nature needed to write the instructions for all life on the planet. News that researchers have added four letters to the genetic alphabet opens ...

As one of the inventors of next-generation DNA sequencing, Sir Shankar Balasubramanian could claim to be responsible for a revolution in the life sciences. Balasubramanian and chemist David Klenerman, ...

MAKING a living thing is no mean feat, what with the billions of components that need putting together. Nature manages it with one molecule: deoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA. It is the ...

DNA contains foundational information needed to sustain life. Understanding how this information is stored and organized has been one of the greatest scientific challenges of the last century. With ...

Proteins are like Spider-Man in the multiverse. The underlying story is the same: each building block of a protein is based on a three-letter DNA code. However, change one letter, and the same protein ...

Chimpanzees, along with bonobos, are humans' closest living relatives. In fact, you may have heard that humans and chimps ...

'Random DNA' is naturally active in the one-celled fungi yeast, while such DNA is turned off as its natural state in mammalian cells, despite their having a common ancestor a billion years ago and the ...

Johns Hopkins engineers have developed gel strips that change shape when given chemical instructions written in DNA code. These "gel automata," measuring just centimeters, can grow or shrink, ...