A team of UK-based researchers is going where no scientist has dared to go—writing artificial human DNA from scratch. They’re hoping the project will answer fundamental questions about the human ...

Stem-cell models provide evidence that viral DNA sequences that entered the human genome in the past were repurposed to aid early stages of embryonic development. Sherif Khodeer is in the Department ...

Veronica Paulus is a former STAT intern supported by the Harvard University Institute of Politics. Complex regions of the human genome remained uncharted, even after researchers sequenced the genome ...

In 1862, Victor Hugo reportedly wrote to his publisher to ask how his newly published novel Les Misérables was selling, with a single character query: “?” The response: “!” This story of one of the ...

WHEN THE first draft of the DNA sequence that makes up the human genome was unveiled in 2000, America’s president at the time, Bill Clinton, announced that humankind was “learning the language with ...

Today, genomics is saving countless lives and even entire species, thanks in large part to a commitment to collaborative and open science that the Human Genome Project helped promote. Twenty-five ...

The promise of genome editing to help understand human diseases and create new therapies is vast, but technological limitations have limited advancement of the field. While existing editing ...

Human DNA in its natural state inside cells (left) compared to eight hours after being infected with HSV-1 (right). The virus compacts the human genome’s size significantly and moves it towards the ...

The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses ...

Twenty-five years ago today, on July 7, 2000, the world got its very first look at a human genome — the 3 billion letter code that controls how our bodies function. Posted online by a small team at ...

Around 45 percent of human DNA is made up of transposable elements, or TEs—genetic leftovers from now-extinct viruses that scientists once believed to be “junk DNA.” But that view is changing, and a ...