Search
Genetic Variation
8mins
The oldest bones in Britain share almost no DNA with anyone alive today. Here’s what that tells us about human history, genetics, and ethnic “homelands."
After more than a million years of separation, two branches of humanity reunited around 300,000 years ago, suggests new research.
Dreams of resurrecting lost species didn’t start in Hollywood or Silicon Valley.
The color of the shirt you're wearing right now depends on many factors, from your eye shape to what language you speak.
New tests to detect species being traded, as well as population studies, aim to help save them.
For billions of years on Earth, life was limited to simple unicellular, non-differentiated organisms. In a mere flash, that changed forever.
Genes are sometimes called the “blueprint of life,” but that doesn't make them the behavioral playbook.
They have held our fascination ever since we first identified their remains.
The study is a solid step toward developing gene therapies against neurodevelopmental disorders.
"Domesticated viral genes" may not be domesticated as scientists thought.
While ticker tape synesthesia was first identified in the 1880s, new research looks at this unique phenomenon — and what it means for language comprehension.
Two populations that are geographically separated today once mated a very long time ago.
Disease kills off 40% of farmed catfish. This gene protects them.
What if you could just grow your own blood?
Virtually all the statistical methods researchers commonly use assume potential mating partners decide who they will have children with based on a roll of the dice.
There were many other species of human on the planet. Svante Pääbo discovered one of them.
A common weed uses uncommon types of photosynthesis.
An interview with CRISPR co-discoverer and Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Jennifer Doudna.
John Templeton Foundation
We all play the genetic lottery - and the outcome matters a lot.
John Templeton Foundation
How can the law keep up with new genetic technology?
The spooky world of quantum mechanics might reach out and touch you — by mutating your DNA. Welcome to the weird world of quantum biology.
Mutations that confer malaria resistance occur more frequently in people who live in regions where the disease is endemic.
Scientists at the San Diego Zoo are on a mission to resurrect the extinct northern white rhino.
A boy in Germany seems to be the first person to be cured of a rare and painful skin condition commonly called "butterfly disease."
Virgin birth – which involves the development of an unfertilised egg – has preoccupied humans for aeons. And although it can’t happen in mammals, it does seem to be possible in […]
We’re a long way from the beginnings of life on Earth. Here’s the key to how we got there. The Universe was already two-thirds of its present age by the time […]