25 April 2023
It is widely thought that Rosalind Franklin was a victim whose work on DNA was stolen, but a letter and unpublished magazine story add to the evidence that this view is misleading
7 December 2022
DNA bound to mineral particles in ancient sediment reveals that north Greenland once had spruce forests populated by hares, reindeer and even mastodons
4 August 2022
Changing Escherichia coli's genetic code may enable the recoded bacterium to be grown in large vats for drug production, without the risk of a viral infection upending the process
6 August 2021
Microscopic organic blobs created from scratch could provide clues about how biological cells formed spontaneously on early Earth – and further efforts to generate synthetic life
15 July 2021
Unusual stretches of DNA in microbes are the largest ever elements of genetic material found to move between organisms. Figuring out how they drive methane consumption in their hosts could help us better understand our planet's climate
14 July 2021
To become an interplanetary species, we may have to genetically engineer ourselves to be more resilient, says geneticist Chris Mason. He has a 500-year plan for life away from Earth
15 April 2021
Some Australian lizards that begin developing as males will hatch as females if the egg is particularly warm, because the heat triggers genes that override their sex chromosomes
23 March 2021
A microbe called Carpediemonas membranifera lacks a key set of proteins thought essential for copying DNA, and therefore for reproduction
19 March 2021
Preserved DNA from animals that lived over 2400 years ago suggests that present-day llamas and alpacas are descended in part from an extinct population of camelids called guanacos
17 February 2021
For the first time, DNA more than a million years old has been obtained from ancient animal remains – and it drastically alters the story of mammoth evolution
