For decades, the central dogma of molecular biology—DNA makes RNA, RNA makes protein, protein makes phenotype—was the guiding framework for understanding inheritance and disease. This model explained ...

Research into how a father’s choices — such as diet, exercise, stress, nicotine use — may transfer traits to his children has ...

Scientists successfully extract RNA from a 130-year-old Tasmanian tiger, thylacine, revealing how its genes functioned before its extinction.

As antibiotic-resistant infections rise and are projected to cause up to 10 million deaths per year by 2050, scientists are looking to bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, as an alternative.

Ribonucleic acid, also called RNA, is a molecule present in all living cells. It plays a critical role in transmitting genetic instructions from DNA and creating proteins. With the power to execute a ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In 1957, just four years after Francis Crick and other scientists solved the riddle of ...

The Tas protein uses an RNA guide to recognize a specific target DNA sequence. A vast search of natural diversity has led scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and ...

Using a novel method, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers map 16 types of simultaneous changes in dozens of samples; ...

Scientists mapped hidden DNA switches in brain support cells to understand how gene control may influence Alzheimer’s disease ...