Scientists have long puzzled over the disappearance of the Neanderthals, which went extinct roughly 40,000 years ago. A lack ...

Doctors take a sample of the baby’s blood, usually by pricking its heel, and test for proteins and other markers associated with illnesses such as sickle-cell anemia or cystic fibrosis. The most ...

A handful of start-up firms are testing therapies that target specific epigenetic markers to treat everything from high ...

Studies of genetics conducted in yeast cells, human neurons, mice or other model systems often reveal networks of genes that ...

Deep within tropical forests, sloths move at a pace that seems almost frozen in time. Their slow movements, low energy use, ...

Scientists have long known that the DNA code in genes is not the only way to pass genetic traits from parents to offspring. "Epigenetic" marks—chemical modifications to DNA that don't change the DNA ...

Not all parts of our genetic code are equal, even when they appear to say the same thing. Scientists have discovered that cells can detect less efficient genetic instructions and selectively silence ...

The asteroid Ryugu imaged by the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft in 2018 JAXA / Kevin M. Gill via Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-2.0 The asteroid Ryugu, millions of miles away from Earth, might not look that ...

A new study reveals all five fundamental nucleobases – the molecular “letters” of life – have been detected in samples from the asteroid Ryugu. Asteroid particles offer a glimpse into the chemical ...

A new study suggests that those with long-lived families probably have the best prospects of making it to a very old age. By Gina Kolata Gina Kolata recently reported on a study of the genes of the ...

There are few hard and fast rules in the study of life, but perhaps the closest we get is the central dogma of molecular biology: DNA is transcribed to RNA, which gets translated into proteins. The ...