In 1869, Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher isolated a mysterious substance from cell nuclei—an overlooked finding that would ...

“The laws of inheritance are quite unknown,” Charles Darwin acknowledged in 1859. The discovery of DNA’s shape altered how we conceived of life itself. The X-ray crystallography by Rosalind Franklin ...

“Our results push back the association of T. pallidum with humans by thousands of years, possibly more than 10,000 years ago in the Late Pleistocene,” said researcher Davide Bozzi at the University of ...

A 5,500-year-old skeleton from Colombia has revealed the oldest known genome of the bacterium linked to syphilis and related ...

Scientists have recovered a genome of Treponema pallidum—the bacterium whose subspecies today are responsible for four treponemal diseases, including syphilis—from 5,500-year-old human remains in ...

Researchers led by the University of Vienna and Liège University Hospital Center have identified genetic variants associated ...

The study of ancient DNA has revolutionised our understanding of human history, enabling scientists to decipher complex population dynamics over tens of thousands of years. By analysing genetic ...

Researchers are moving DNA information from past species to living ones. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox ...

Recent advances in ancient DNA analysis have sparked intriguing discussions about the possibility of non-human entities once ruling the Earth. While such claims challenge the boundaries of ...