'Quadruple helix' DNA discovered in human cells

In 1953, Cambridge researchers Watson and Crick published a paper describing the interweaving 'double helix' DNA structure - the chemical code for all life. Now, in the year of that scientific landmark's 60th Anniversary, ...

Biomedical engineers teach bacteria to count

Biomedical engineers at Boston University have taught bacteria how to count. Professor James J. Collins and colleagues have wired a new sequence of genes that allow the microbes to count discrete events, opening the door ...

Yeast with more than 50% synthetic genome is created in the lab

Researchers have combined over seven synthetic chromosomes that were made in the lab into a single yeast cell, resulting in a strain with more than 50% synthetic DNA that survives and replicates similarly to wild yeast strains.

A new tool to block protein-protein interactions

Inside cells, proteins constantly interact with each other to carry out different functions. For some diseases in which these functions are altered, blocking the binding between two or more proteins emerges as a possible ...

Understanding genomes, piece by piece

The celebrated physicist Richard Feynman is credited with the quote, "What I cannot create, I do not understand." As well as informing Feynman's approach to theoretical physics, it's a good way of describing the motivations ...

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