evolution, genetics

DNA passed to and from all kinds of organisms, even across kingdoms, has helped shape the tree of life, to a large and undisputed degree in microbes and also unexpectedly in multicellular fungi, plants, and animals.

The new fossil from Laos helps answer the question of how some people from Oceania carry DNA from the ancient hominin.

New techniques have shown that people reached the New World far earlier than the long-standing estimate of 13,000 years ago, but scientists still debate exactly when humans arrived on the continent—and how.

Diverse lines of evidence point to humans’ presence in the New World long before the dawn of Clovis culture. But rewriting this chapter of human history raises many questions about how these early people came to inhabit these continents.

Researchers tracked the movements of endangered caribou and sequenced a portion of their genomes to determine which genes may influence migratory behavior.

Do members of Homo floresiensis still inhabit the Indonesian island where their fossils helped identify a new human species fewer than 20 years ago?

Experimentally nudging the patterning within the compound eyes of insects.

A study in mice finds that for certain genes, one parent’s allele can dominate expression and shape behavior—and which parent’s allele does so varies throughout the body.

A handful of new studies moves the needle toward a consensus on the long-disputed question of whether insect wings evolved from legs or from the body wall, but the devil is in the details.

Researchers find that evolution can operate on extraordinarily fast timescales.

New research finds that the appearance of the HbS mutation, which protects against malaria but leads to sickle cell disease when present in two copies, was more common in sperm samples from men in Ghana, where malaria risk is high, than Europeans.

Jumping genes in bdelloid rotifers are tamped down by DNA methylation performed by an enzyme pilfered from bacteria roughly 60 million years ago, a study finds.

The field of ancient DNA, which combines archaeology and anthropology with cutting-edge genetics, is requiring scientists to have frank conversations about when research is justified and who it benefits.

Epigenetic structures appear to reduce the rate of changes in genes essential for survival and reproduction, a study finds, challenging the notion that mutations are evenly distributed throughout the genome prior to selection.

Long lambasted as junk DNA or genomic parasites, transposable elements turn out to be contributors to adaptation.

The movements of so-called jumping genes can generate the genetic diversity needed to drive evolutionary change in populations over time.  

Hydra vulgaris constantly replenish the cells in their heads and grow new ones to reproduce asexually. But gene expression analyses reveal that regenerating a head after an injury is a very different process.

The first chromosome-level genome assembly for a ctenophore may allow scientists to finally resolve the roots of the animal family tree.

A massive screen of bacterial and archaeal genomes revealed five previously unknown instances where an organism uses an alternate code to translate genetic blueprints into proteins.

A report of preserved fragments of nuclei and chromatin in a fossilized femur of a 125-million-year-old Caudipteryx dinosaur elicits skepticism.