In a way, sequencing DNA is very simple: There's a molecule, you look at it, and you write down what you find. You'd think it would be easy—and, for any one letter in the sequence, it is. The problem ...

When we think about genetic inheritance, we usually leap to DNA, the four-letter code containing the instructions for building a living organism. Scientists know that DNA encodes everything from hair ...

For decades, the hunt for the genetic roots of common disease has focused overwhelmingly on single-letter changes in the DNA ...

In 1995, with the Human Genome Project underway, sequencing was all the rage. Scientists working on the project cloned short fragments of the whole genome and used Sanger sequencing to determine the ...

New technological advancements have allowed us to look at the entire human genome. The genome is the complete set of genetic information encoded in the DNA. Human DNA has around three billion letters ...

DNA barcoding is a way to identify a species by its genetic sequence. DNA from an organism is matched to a DNA barcode, which is a short fragment of DNA from a specific gene. A DNA barcode is like a ...

Epigenetic memory is one of the strangest and most consequential features of the genome. Across generations, cells and even ...

The newest DNA sequencing technology from Swiss multinational Roche doesn’t measure DNA directly but in fact analyzes a different polymer altogether. The technology is not yet available for sale, but ...

Metal ions bridging the grooves of two DNA helices explain how they lock together, the first direct look at the DNA zipper ...