genes – Quanta Magazine

Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 14:55:46 +0000

Ever since viruses came to light in the late 1800s, scientists have set them apart from the rest of life. Viruses were far smaller than cells, and inside their protein shells they carried little more than genes. They could not grow, copy their own genes or do much of anything. Researchers assumed that each virus was a solitary particle drifting alone through the world, able to replicate only if it...

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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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In Our Cellular Clocks, She’s Found a Lifetime of Discoveries

Veronique Greenwood — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 14:47:40 +0000

This morning, when the sun came up, billions of humans opened their eyes and admitted into their bodies a shaft of light from space. When the stream of photons struck the retina, neurons fired. And in every organ, in nearly every cell, elaborate machinery stirred. Each cell’s circadian clock, a complex of proteins whose levels rise and fall with the sun, clicked into gear.

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Even Synthetic Life Forms With a Tiny Genome Can Evolve

Yasemin Saplakoglu — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 14:22:54 +0000

Seven years ago, researchers showed that they could strip cells down to their barest fundamentals, creating a life form with the smallest genome that still allowed it to grow and divide in the lab. But in shedding half its genetic load, that “minimal” cell also lost some of the hardiness and adaptability that natural life evolved over billions of years. That left biologists wondering whether the...

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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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