It’s only spit, but what’s inside your saliva may help solve a dosing dilemma facing doctors and patients. By using DNA to customize prescriptions, researchers at Temple University’s School of Pharmacy are working to prevent adverse drug reactions before you even take the first dose.

Much of human DNA is the genetic equivalent of e-mail spam: short repeated sequences that have no obvious function other than making more of themselves.

Researchers have shown that self-induced breaks in the DNA of immune cells known as lymphocytes activate genes that cause the cells to travel from where they're made to where they help the body fight invaders.

A new tool for investigating the rice genome has been developed by researchers at UC Davis led by Pamela Ronald, professor of plant pathology. The inexpensive, publicly-available rice DNA microarray covers nearly all the 45,000 genes in the rice genome. Details are published this week in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

Scientists at the world-leading Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester – where the revolutionary technique of genetic fingerprinting was invented by Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys- are developing techniques which may one day allow police to work out someone's surname from the DNA alone.

A gene contained in laboratory yeast has helped an international team of researchers uncover new findings about the process by which protein molecules bind to control sequences in genes in order to initiate gene expression, according to findings reported in the journal Nature.

A new study shows that the DNA of so-called "good bacteria" that normally live in the intestines may help defend the body against infection.

Our genome contains many genes encoding proteins that are similar to those of other organisms, suggesting evolutionary relationships; however, protein-coding genes account for only a small fraction the genome, and there are many other DNA sequences that are conserved across species.

Scientists at the University of Illinois have developed a new class of disposable, microplate-based optical biosensors capable of detecting protein-DNA interactions. Based on the properties of photonic crystals, the biosensors are suitable for the rapid identification of inhibitors of protein-nucleic acid and protein-protein interactions.

Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore have developed a novel test to screen for chemical modifications to DNA known as methylation. The technology potentially could be used both for early cancer diagnoses and for assessing patients' response to cancer therapies.

Out of the 3 billion genetic letters that spell out the human genome, Yale scientists have found a handful that may have contributed to the evolutionary changes in human limbs that enabled us to manipulate tools and walk upright.

DNA barcoding is a movement to catalog all life on earth by a simple standardized genetic tag, similar to stores labeling products with unique barcodes. The effort promises foolproof food inspection, improved border security, and better defenses against disease-causing insects, among many other applications.