Genetics

Dinosaurs rose and fell, but one foot-long scaly creature -- the tuatara -- persisted. Recently, the first tuatara genome was sequenced, unlocking insights into the evolution of other reptiles, birds, dinosaurs, and even our own mammalian lineage.

Researchers from John Hopkins University recently developed a newly improved gene editing tool that is extremely fast — it allows genes to be edited within just a few seconds!

Humans are one of mammal’s top drinking champions; we even have better tolerance than elephants

Current polio vaccines have been successful in nearly eradicating polio in the world. Unfortunately, there have been emerging cases of polio in recent years. To combat this, scientists have designed a new oral poliovirus vaccine that could result in a…

New research from Cedars-Sinai suggests that patients with young-onset Parkinson’s may have been born with the beginnings of the disorder.

40 new species of fish have been found in Lake Mweru in East Africa. Breeding of related lineages may have allowed the cichlids to rapidly evolve to fill different ecological niches.

Doctors at Boston Children's Hospital engineered a unique medicine to treat a young girl's disease: they reverse engineered a blocker from her DNA to inhibit the gene causing the disease.

CRISPR genome editing has been used to study the biology of a number of species, but its use in reptiles has been difficult to achieve. Scientists have now figured this out, and albino lizards are the product! Read Ben Andreone's article to learn more!

by Layla Siraj figures by Rebecca Senft Imagine if you could tell, through some combination of your environment and your genetics, what illnesses you might develop. This could give you the ability to either prevent these illnesses before they even…

by Marina Watanabe figures by Elayne Fivenson Hours after giving birth, my sister sent a picture of her newborn baby to our family group text. In what I can only assume was a painkiller-induced haze, she wrote, “The baby looks exactly like…