Colibactin is a powerful toxin produced by Escherichia coli and other bacteria living in the human gut. This highly unstable ...

A closeup look at colibactin’s structure reveals chemical motifs that guide its mutation-wreaking “warheads” to specific stretches of DNA.

Researchers from Durham University, Jagiellonian University (Poland) and the John Innes Centre have achieved a breakthrough in understanding DNA gyrase, a vital bacterial enzyme and key antibiotic ...

While CRISPR is probably the most prominent gene-editing technology, there are others, some developed before and since. And people have been developing CRISPR variants to perform more specialized ...

Researchers describe a different way to build a COVID-19 vaccine, one that would, in theory, remain effective against new and emerging variants and could be taken as a pill, by inhalation or other ...

A mammoth tooth reveals bacterial DNA from 1.1 million years ago, offering new clues about diseases and hidden ecosystems in the Ice Age.

An international team led by researchers at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, has uncovered microbial DNA preserved in woolly and steppe mammoth remains dating back more than one million years. The ...

Sequencing mammoth DNA has already helped scientists map out how these Ice Age giants evolved, migrated, and survived. But there's a hidden layer of history still waiting to be decoded – the microbes ...

Nobody wants to be average. But for a long time, scientists have found it convenient to think of bacterial cells as just that: "average." Researchers have traditionally relied on population-level ...

Penn State scientists uncovered an ancient bacterial defense where dormant viral DNA helps bacteria fight new viral threats. The enzyme PinQ flips bacterial genes to create protective proteins that ...