Genomics

The discovery that viruses move between species unexpectedly often is rewriting ideas about their evolutionary history — and may have troubling implications for the threat from emerging diseases.

Species gain and shed startling amounts of DNA as they evolve, and even genomes that look stable churn furiously. What does it mean?

The computational biologist John Novembre uses our genetic code to rewrite the history of humanity.

Examine evolution over the course of years or centuries, and you’ll find that it progresses much more quickly than it does over geologic time.

A new look at the reasons why organisms missing pairs of genes sometimes do much better than normal.

Researchers have used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to manipulate the way that DNA coils up inside the cell — another step in the quest to understand how the genome’s 3-D structure impacts its function.

In a monumental set of experiments, spread out over nearly two decades, biologists removed genes two at a time to uncover the secret workings of the cell.

Scientists have created a synthetic organism that possesses only the genes it needs to survive. But they have no idea what roughly a third of those genes do.

The soil teems with billions of hidden microbes. Researchers have begun to catalog how these organisms are changing the world.