Among the many marvels of life is the cell's ability to divide and thus enable organisms to grow and renew themselves. For this, the cell must duplicate its DNA—its genome—and segregate it equally ...

Scientists have uncovered how brewer’s yeast developed its unusually tiny centromeres, the DNA regions that guide chromosome ...

One of the challenges of working with ancient DNA samples is that damage accumulates over time, breaking up the structure of the double helix into ever smaller fragments. In the samples we’ve worked ...

Scientists have discovered a new property of the molecular motors that shape our chromosomes. While six years ago they found that these so-called SMC motor proteins make long loops in our DNA, they ...

Chromosomes are thread-like structures located inside the nucleus of animal and plant cells. Each chromosome is made of protein and a single molecule of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Passed from ...

New research reveals that ancient interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals shaped our modern human DNA - especially on the X chromosome.

In high school textbooks, human chromosomes are pictured as wonky Xs like two hotdogs jammed together. But those images are far from accurate. "For 90 percent of the time," said Jun-Han Su, ...

Among the many marvels of life is the cell's ability to divide and thus enable organisms to grow and renew themselves. For this, the cell must duplicate its DNA – its genome – and segregate it equally ...

Scientists from the Kavli Institute of Delft University of Technology and the IMP Vienna Biocenter discovered a new property of the molecular motors that shape our chromosomes. While six years ago ...