Lab revokes honors for controversial DNA scientist Watson
James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning DNA scientist who lost his job in 2007 for expressing racist views, was stripped of several honorary titles Friday by the New York lab he once headed.
Jan 12, 2019
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New dynamic probes for ions interacting with biomolecules
Pairs of negatively charged phosphate groups and positive magnesium ions represent a key structural feature of DNA and RNA embedded in water. Vibrations of phosphate groups have now been established as selective probes of ...
Innovative experimental scheme can create mirror molecules
Exploring the mystery of molecular handedness in nature, scientists have proposed a new experimental scheme to create custom-made mirror molecules for analysis. The technique can make ordinary molecules spin so fast that ...
Detangling DNA replication
DNA is a lengthy molecule—approximately 1,000-fold longer than the cell in which it resides—so it can't be jammed in haphazardly. Rather, it must be neatly organized so proteins involved in critical processes can access ...
Math shows how DNA twists, turns and unzips
If you've ever seen a picture of a DNA molecule, you probably saw it in its famous B-form: two strands coiling around each other in a right-handed fashion to form a double helix. But did you know that DNA can change its shape?
Biochemists discover cause of genome editing failures with hyped CRISPR system
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago are the first to describe why CRISPR gene editing sometimes fails to work, and how the process can be made to be much more efficient.
Hi-res image of structure of the origin recognition complex bound to DNA revealed
Cells propagate by making copies of themselves via genome replication. Arguably, replication of DNA is the most fundamental and conserved mechanism of all life forms. Cracking the secret of how this process is achieved with ...
The changing shape of DNA
The shape of DNA can be changed with a range of triggers including copper and oxygen—according to new research from the University of East Anglia.
The convoluted history of the double-helix
It's been 65 years since the paper "Molecular structure of nucleic acids," by James Watson and Francis Crick, was published in Nature. Or, more prosaically, the paper that first describes the structure of DNA as we know it ...
Scientists have tracked down an elusive 'tangled knot' of DNA
It's DNA, but not as we know it. In a world first, Australian researchers have identified a new DNA structure—called the i-motif—inside cells. A twisted 'knot' of DNA, the i-motif has never before been directly seen inside ...
