This year revealed just how much scientists have learned about the disease, from how animals become naturally cancer-resistant to how tumor cells harness extracellular DNA to develop rapid drug resistance.

Activation of retrotransposons in the animals’ cancerous cells sets off an innate immune response that triggers cell death.

Mice who get less attention from their mothers have more copies of a common retrotransposon in the genomes of their hippocampal neurons.

No two neurons are alike. What does that mean for brain function?

Recent advances in single-cell omics and other techniques are revealing variation at genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, and posttranscriptomic levels.

Meet some of the people featured in the March 2015 issue of The Scientist.

How do we age, and can we slow it down?

These mobile genetic elements can wreak havoc on the genome. Researchers are now trying to understand how such activity contributes to the aging process.