Before a cell divides, its DNA is replicated so that each daughter cell inherits the same genetic information. The two copies, known as "sister chromatids," are held together by a ring-shaped protein ...

The DNA packed inside every human cell contains instructions for life, written in billions of letters of genetic code. Every time a cell divides, the complete code, divided among 46 chromosomes, must ...

What is DNA, and how does it work? You don't need a degree in genetics to understand. Here, we'll give an overview of DNA and ...

Shakespeare’s entire catalog of sonnets and eight of his tragedies, all of Wikipedia’s English-language pages, and one of the first movies ever made: scientists have been able to fit the contents of ...

A deeper understanding of how DNA changes over generations helps scientists learn why people differ and how diseases develop. Until recently, many fast-changing parts of the human genome remained ...

This story is part of our series on viroids and virusoids, small infectious RNAs. The story is also the second installment in a series on hepatitis D virus, a virusoid-like pathogen that causes ...

The world's oldest DNA comes from a 2.4 million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland. Will scientists eventually sequence even older DNA?

DNA is the molecular basis of heredity, the inherited traits that pass between generations in a person's family tree. Embodied in the sequence of base pairs, DNA carries information between ...