A green fluorescent dye with a novel DNA binding mechanism improves signal-to-noise in different DNA amplification assays.

Scientists have genetically modified isolated microbes for decades. Now, using CRISPR, they intend to target entire microbiomes.

Undergraduate students delve into genomics and synthetic biology thanks to a new breed of technologically advanced courses.

Bacteria that live in the digestive tracts of animals may influence the adaptive trajectories of their hosts.

Researchers aim to unravel the molecular mechanisms by which a single genotype gives rise to diverse castes in eusocial organisms.

Several labs have reported the formation of bacterial nanotubes under different, often contrasting conditions. What are these structures and why are they so hard to reproduce?

Photo: Ori Fragman, Hebrew University Hordeum spontaneum, the plant studied for BARE-1 retroelements. With genome sequences arriving almost as regularly as the morning paper, the public's attention is focused on genes--new genes to protect crops against pests; rogue genes that make bacteria resistant to antibiotics; faulty genes that, if fixed, could cure diseases such as muscular dystrophy. What many people don't realize is that genes account for only part of an organism's DNA, and in many c

Saliva tests screen staff and students at University of Illinois; Study ranks species most susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection; COVID-19 clinical trials test drugs that inhibit kinin system

©Mehau Kulyk/Photo Researchers, IncToward the end of World War II, a German-imposed food embargo in western Holland – a densely populated area already suffering from scarce food supplies, ruined agricultural lands, and the onset of an unusually harsh winter – led to the death by starvation of some 30,000 people. Detailed birth records collected during that so-called Dutch Hunger Winter have provided scientists with useful data for analyzing the long-term health effects of prenat

The human genome is much like the American West of the 1850s: Everyone wants a piece of the pie. Similar to gold prospectors of 150 years ago, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and even universities, are frantically searching for the nuggets of gold that will help them find the mother lode—a gene whose function is sufficiently marketable to make all of the preliminary research worthwhile. Companies that do strike gold get to introduce new classes of drugs to the market. Others hope to