A group of scientists in Princeton's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology has uncovered a new biological mechanism that could provide a clearer window into a cell's inner workings.

Charles Chatman Freed After DNA Tests Showed He Had Been Serving 26 Years for a Sexual Assault Chatman Never Committed.

Genome rearrangements, resulting in variations in the numbers of copies of genes, occur when the cellular process that copies DNA during cell division stalls and then switches to a different genetic “template,” said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in a report that appears today in the journal Cell.

The veil has finally been lifted on an enzyme that is critical to the process of DNA transcription and replication, and is a prime target of antibacterial and anticancer drugs.

Researchers have solved the structure of a DNA-protein complex that is crucial in the spread of antibiotic resistance among bacteria. Knowing this structure also provides fundamental insight into how cells successfully divide into two new cells with intact DNA

The Medical College of Georgia Center for Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine has been selected to isolate RNA and DNA from the blood of thousands of children involved in a worldwide study of the causes of type 1 diabetes.

The development of higher forms of life would appear to have been influenced by RNA polymerase II. This enzyme transcribes the information coded by genes from DNA into messenger-RNA (mRNA), which in turn is the basis for the production of proteins.

Using computer simulations, researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated a strategy for sequencing DNA by driving the molecule back and forth through a nanopore capacitor in a semiconductor chip. The technique could lead to a device that would read human genomes quickly and affordably.

Surrounding the small islands of genes within the human genome is a vast sea of mysterious DNA. While most of this non-coding DNA is junk, some of it is used to help genes turn on and off.

DNA, the biomolecule that provides the blueprint for life, has a lesser-known identity as a stretchy polymer.

Damaged or defective genes have long been known to be the cause of some cancers. Over the past decade, however, scientists have discovered that even healthy genes can be switched on or off and can cause cancer without any changes in the underlying DNA sequence—although how this happens has remained poorly understood.

Crossovers and double-strand DNA breaks do not occur randomly on yeast chromosomes during meiosis, but are greatly influenced by the proximity of the chromosome’s telomere, according to research in the laboratory of Whitehead Fellow Andreas Hochwagen.