evolution

The DNA of some viruses doesn’t use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this exception is possible and hints that it could be more common than we think.

Other diseases with long-term symptoms can help us understand how COVID can affect us long after the virus itself is gone.

Genomic surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus can help control the current pandemic and prevent future ones. But the process is marred by insufficient data and geographic inequities.

Researchers have finally seen how some smell receptors bind to odor molecules. The work yields new insights into one of the most mysterious and versatile senses.

The discovery of a gene shared by two unrelated species of fish is the latest evidence that horizontal gene transfers occur surprisingly often in vertebrates.

In some symbiotic partnerships, an RNA-based mechanism may sabotage the growth of greedy hosts.

Studies of sleep are usually neurological. But some of nature’s simplest animals suggest that sleep evolved for metabolic reasons, long before brains even existed.

Transcription factors that act throughout the genome can arise from mashups of transposable elements inserted into established genes.

New work shows that histones, long treated as boring spools for DNA, sit at the center of the origin story of eukaryotes and continue to play important roles in evolution and disease.