Every time a cell divides, it must copy its DNA with extraordinary precision. But this process is constantly challenged by ...

The DNA packed inside every human cell contains instructions for life, written in billions of letters of genetic code. Every time a cell divides, the complete code, divided among 46 chromosomes, must ...

Cyanobacteria—ancient microbes that oxygenated Earth and made complex life possible—are still revealing surprises billions of years later. Scientists have now discovered that a molecular system once ...

Structural biologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison today published cryo-electron microscopy structures of the complete bacterial DNA replication restart complex — a molecular machine that le ...

The herpesvirus can manipulate our DNA with far more precision than previously thought. The virus condenses and changes the shape of our genetic material to hijack the host genes needed for ...

For decades, scientists believed a fertilized egg’s DNA began as a shapeless mass, only organizing itself once the embryo switched on its genes. But new research reveals that the genome is already ...

Replication origins in Trypanosoma brucei integrate multiple features previously described individually in opisthokonts, revealing a unified structural topology built from strand-specific nucleotide ...

DNA is often called the blueprint of life, but what does that really mean? Elizabeth Worthey, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Genetics in the Heersink School of Medicine, explains everything ...

DNA is more than just a code—it’s a beautifully precise molecular structure that holds life’s instructions. Understanding its building blocks, base pairing rules, and replication fidelity helps us ...

“The laws of inheritance are quite unknown,” Charles Darwin acknowledged in 1859. The discovery of DNA’s shape altered how we conceived of life itself. The X-ray crystallography by Rosalind Franklin ...