Synthetic biology

Gene drives promise to spread a trait across an entire population. But evolutionary forces are going to alter even the best-engineered plans.

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 biologist David Deamer proposes that life evolved from a collection of interacting molecules, probably in a pool in the shadow of a volcano.

Scientists hope that new genetic letters, created in the lab, will endow DNA with new powers.