DNA – Quanta Magazine

How ‘Idle’ Egg Cells Defend Their DNA From Damage

Meghan Willcoxon — Mon, 13 May 2024 14:35:50 +0000

Out of all the cells in the body, oocytes are the most patient. The immature egg cells form inside a female’s body when she’s still a fetus in her mother’s womb, and then they wait in a quiescent state for years, if not decades. Cocooned inside ovaries, they pause, neither dividing nor replicating their DNA, so that one day they may pass along pristinely preserved genetic information to the next...

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A ‘Lobby’ Where a Molecule Mob Tells Genes What to Do

Philip Ball — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 15:47:52 +0000

The discovery during the Human Genome Project in the early 2000s that we humans have only about 20,000 protein-coding genes — about as many as the tiny soil-dwelling nematode worm, and less than half as many as the rice plant — came as a shock. That blow to our pride was softened, though, by the idea that the human genome is rich in regulatory connections. Our genes interact in a dense network...

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The Year in Biology

Hannah Waters — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 19:13:40 +0000

Revolutions in the biological sciences can take many forms. Sometimes they erupt from the use of a novel tool or the invention of a radical theory that suddenly opens so many new avenues for research, it can feel dizzying. Sometimes they take shape slowly, through the slow accumulation of studies, each one representing years of painstaking work, that collectively chip away at the prevailing wisdom...

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To Defend the Genome, These Cells Destroy Their Own DNA

Dan Samorodnitsky — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 14:00:45 +0000

Marie Delattre was studying the sexual reproduction practices of microscopic worms when she noticed something unexpected. Under the microscope, an embryo of the nematode Mesorhabditis belari was dividing as it should, progressing from one cell to two to four. But inside a few cells she saw an inexplicable spray of DNA fragments floating around where they didn’t belong. “There was DNA everywhere...

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Selfish, Virus-Like DNA Can Carry Genes Between Species

Saugat Bolakhe — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 13:58:41 +0000

Biologists have understood the broad contours of the rules of inheritance for more than a century: that genes are passed down from parent to child within species. But in more recent years, they have also become aware of genes that go rogue and hop laterally between species — be they frog genes in Madagascar that originally came from snakes, or antifreeze genes found in cold-water fish like herring...

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