DNA

As historian and author Yuval Harari suggests, market forces and investor greed will keep moving the data revolution forward. But there are balancing forces to this onslaught, says Marcelo Gleiser.

Consider this: Evidence points to a microbial Eve as our first ancestor — a tough, underwater organism withstanding extremes that became every other creature to ever live, says Marcelo Gleiser.

New data have confirmed major differences in mutation rates between the sexes — showing that children inherit more mutations from their dads than from their moms, says guest commentator Robert Martin.

There's an explosion of interest in personalized diet approaches and at-home test kits are popping up everywhere. Part of the approach includes analyzing your DNA, but genes can only tell us so much.

Few scientific discoveries have caused as much excitement as that of editing our genes; yet we owe some of the most stunning wonders around us to old-fashioned breeding practices, says Jimena Canales.

He's the biochemist Har Gobind Khorana, who discovered the grammar that organizes DNA. But first he had to overcome the accent and mannerisms of his Indian village.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into research labs in an effort to collect genetic information on a million people. But some skeptics say the focus should be on humans themselves, not DNA.

Benjamine Spencer's case illustrates how difficult it can be for some prisoners in Texas to prove they did not commit a crime without new and unassailable evidence, such as DNA.

Bacteria engineered with an expanded genetic alphabet can produce novel proteins, which could lead to the development of new drugs.

Billions of these birds once flew over North America, but the last known passenger pigeon died in 1914. To try to figure out what happened, scientists analyzed DNA from the toes of birds in museums.

It looks like dog DNA has evolved in lockstep with our DNA. A new study finds evidence in Nigeria's street dogs.