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Jennifer Doudna, one of CRISPR’s primary innovators, stays optimistic about how the gene-editing tool will continue to empower basic biological understanding.
A newly discovered mechanism may enable viruses to shuttle genes between bacteria 1,000 times as often as was thought — making them a major force in those cells’ evolution.
Disease-causing viruses and message-carrying vesicles sit at the ends of a spectrum of membranous particles that cells release.
A newfound pair of giant viruses have massive genomes and the most complete resources for building proteins ever seen in the viral world. They have refreshed the debate about the origins of these cellular parasites.
If you didn’t get a flu shot, you are endangering more than just your own health. Calculations of herd immunity against common diseases don’t make exceptions.
The discovery that viruses move between species unexpectedly often is rewriting ideas about their evolutionary history — and may have troubling implications for the threat from emerging diseases.
Mathematical insights into how RNA helps viruses pull together their protein shells could guide future studies of viral behavior and function.
Examine evolution over the course of years or centuries, and you’ll find that it progresses much more quickly than it does over geologic time.
Without viruses, we might never have evolved.