A deeper understanding of how DNA changes over generations helps scientists learn why people differ and how diseases develop. Until recently, many fast-changing parts of the human genome remained ...

Knowing how human DNA changes over generations is essential to estimating genetic disease risks and understanding how we evolved. But some of the most changeable regions of our DNA have been ...

By Nancy Battick For years we’ve been told that MtDNA (maternal DNA) is passed from mother to children, both male and female, ...

Scientists have long debated how modern humans evolved. For decades, most researchers agreed that Homo sapiens came from one ancestral group in Africa, dating back 200,000 to 300,000 years. But new ...

With a new study in the journal Cell, researchers at Stanford University and Stockholm University have contributed to increased knowledge about gene regulation in human cells. How genes are turned on ...

Chimpanzees, along with bonobos, are humans' closest living relatives. In fact, you may have heard that humans and chimps share 98.8% of their DNA. But is this actually true? And what does "similar ...

The world's oldest DNA comes from a 2.4 million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland. Will scientists eventually sequence even older DNA? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...

The human genome is chock full of what scientists once considered "junk DNA." This DNA is actually something called transposable elements, or TEs. These are repetitive sequences found in the genome ...