Unlocking crop diversity by manipulating plant sex

Researchers have discovered a key gene that influences genetic recombination during sexual reproduction in wild plant populations. Adding extra copies of this gene resulted in a massive boost to recombination and diversity ...

How does a honeybee queen avoid inbreeding in her colony?

Recombination, or crossing-over, occurs when sperm and egg cells are formed and segments of each chromosome pair are interchanged. This process plays an crucial role in the maintanance of genetic variation. Matthew Webster ...

Elusive viral 'machine' architecture finally rendered

For half a century biologists have studied the way that the lambda virus parks DNA in the chromosome of a host E. coli bacterium and later extracts it as a model reaction of genetic recombination. But for all that time, they ...

On the move for repair

Scientists from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research have elucidated mechanisms that control DNA movement in the nucleus. They found that DNA with double-strand breaks moves more than undamaged DNA, thereby ...

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