One of the challenges of working with ancient DNA samples is that damage accumulates over time, breaking up the structure of the double helix into ever smaller fragments. In the samples we've worked ...

Researchers are making strides in understanding how chromosome structures change throughout the cell's life cycle. Researchers at Rice University are making strides in understanding how chromosome ...

Scientists have discovered a new property of the molecular motors that shape our chromosomes. While six years ago they found that these so-called SMC motor proteins make long loops in our DNA, they ...

As the cell proceeds through the stages of cell division (from left to right: interphase, prometaphase, metaphase, and anaphase), chromosomes become progressively more compact through a combination of ...

The centromere is necessary for the transport of chromosomes during cell division and, therefore, for the correct transmission of genetic information. Most plants and animals have chromosomes with a ...

Non-coding DNA is essential for both humans and trypanosomes, despite the large evolutionary divergence between these two species.

Researchers at Rice University are making strides in understanding how chromosome structures change throughout the cell's life cycle. Their study on motorized processes that actively influence the ...

During sexual reproduction, haploid gametes (i.e. eggs and sperm) are generated from diploid precursors through the specialized cell division of meiosis. Meiosis reduces ploidy by following one round ...

Beef jerky and some woolly mammoths have at least one thing in common: Drying turns their DNA into super-tough glass. This glassy DNA is so stable that it preserved the three-dimensional structure of ...

Among the many marvels of life is the cell's ability to divide and thus enable organisms to grow and renew themselves. For this, the cell must duplicate its DNA – its genome – and segregate it equally ...