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.

Thirty years out from the start of the Human Genome Project, researchers have finally finished sequencing the full 3 billion bases of a person’s genetic code. But even a complete reference genome has its shortcomings.

Life sciences took center stage virtually around the world June 26. President Bill Clinton, flanked on the left by Celera Genomics Group president J. Craig Venter and on the right by National Human Genome Research Institute director Francis S. Collins, announced the completion of "the first survey of the entire human genome."

A few kilograms of DNA could theoretically store all of humanity’s data, but there are practical challenges to overcome.

Everyone knows that the first genome sequencing projects took years of work and represent the combined product of tens of thousands of individual fragments.

Life scientists have been challenged more than ever this year not just to critically analyze data, but to better interpret those data for an increasingly critical public.

By Jeffrey M. Perkel Surpassing the Law of Averages How to expose the behaviors of genes, RNA, proteins, and metabolites in single cells. By necessity or convenience, almost everything we know about biochemistry and molecular biology derives from bulk behavior: From gene regulation to Michaelis-Menten kinetics, we understand biology in terms of what the “average” cell in a population does. But, as Jonathan Weissman of the University of Califo