Scientists for the first time have mapped out the molecular "switches" that can turn on or silence individual genes in the DNA in more than 100 types of human cells, an accomplishment that reveals the ...

For decades, biologists have known that the instructions for life are written in DNA, yet the vast majority of those letters seemed to sit in the dark, doing little that was obvious. Now a new ...

One person's junk is another's treasure. An international team of scientists have found that strings of "junk" DNA that were written off as having no useful function are actually pretty important ...

Scientists have long known that the DNA code in genes is not the only way to pass genetic traits from parents to offspring. "Epigenetic" marks—chemical modifications to DNA that don't change the DNA ...

All the cells in an organism have the exact same genetic sequence. What differs across cell types is their epigenetics-meticulously placed chemical tags that influence which genes are expressed in ...

Genes are the building blocks of life, and the genetic code provides the instructions for the complex processes that make organisms function. But how and why did it come to be the way it is? "We find ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Recent breakthroughs in genetics research may have uncovered new genes underlying common psychiatric disorders. Schizophrenia and ...

Mice show that DNA methylation tags can defy Mendel’s inheritance rules by appearing in offspring even when neither parent ...

“DNA, RNA and proteins are the key players to regulate all processes in the cells of our body,” Leiden Professor John van Noort explains. “To understand the (mis-)functioning of these molecules, it is ...