A team of Penn State University researchers is the first to conduct a genome-wide study to compare the relative importance of factors that contribute to DNA mutations, which are implicated in cancer and over 40 neurological disorders.

Some 10,000 years ago white rice evolved from wild red rice and began spreading around the globe. But how did this happen?

Genes account for only 2.5 percent of DNA in the human genetic blueprint, yet diseases can result not only from mutant genes, but from mutations of other DNA that controls genes. University of Utah researchers report in the journal Nature Genetics that they have developed a faster, less expensive technique for mutating those large, non-gene stretches of DNA.