Molecular biology

Proteins work like rigid keys to activate cellular functions — or so everyone thought. Scientists are discovering a huge number of proteins that shape-shift to do their work, upending a century-old maxim of biology.

A virus that causes crippling birth defects has been shown to do something else: It changes thousands of messages coming from DNA that control normal cellular activities.

A new look at the reasons why organisms missing pairs of genes sometimes do much better than normal.

In a monumental set of experiments, spread out over nearly two decades, biologists removed genes two at a time to uncover the secret workings of the cell.

Gene drives promise to spread a trait across an entire population. But evolutionary forces are going to alter even the best-engineered plans.

A new study reveals that individual genes can create many different versions of the molecular machinery that powers the cell.

Scientists have created a synthetic organism that possesses only the genes it needs to survive. But they have no idea what roughly a third of those genes do.

The biologist Sean B. Carroll rediscovers the scientific thrill of an unexpected revelation.