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 ...

Decades of research has viewed DNA as a sequence-based instruction manual; yet every cell in the body shares the same genes – so where is the language that writes the memory of cell identities?

Although there are striking differences between the cells that make up your eyes, kidneys, brain and toes, the DNA blueprint ...

The non-coding genome, once dismissed as "junk DNA", is now recognized as a fundamental regulator of gene expression and a key player in understanding complex diseases. Following the landmark ...

The puzzle seems impossible: take a three-billion-letter code and predict what happens if you swap a single letter. The code we’re talking about—the human genome—stores most of its instructions in ...

For decades, scientists have been puzzled by large portions of the human genome labeled as “junk” DNA, sequences that seemingly serve no purpose. Yet, recent studies suggest these cryptic sequences ...

Stay up to date on the latest science with Brush Up Summaries. Article reviewed by Ninning Liu, PhD from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. Similar to retail stores that use standardized ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Gabrielle Hartley, University of Connecticut (THE CONVERSATION) When the Human Genome ...

Genetic features known as transposons make up a large portion of many mammalian genomes, including humans', and they are now known to play a variety of roles. Some transposable elements (TEs) could be ...