We are what we are because of ancient and mysterious genetics.

(Alones Creative/iStock/Getty Images) One of the most iconic visual representations in biological science is the double helix ...

In 1968, the American biochemist and geneticist Marshall Nirenberg and his colleagues won the Nobel Prize in physiology or ...

The genetic code is the recipe for life, and provides the instructions for how to make proteins, generally using just 20 amino acids. But certain groups of microbes have an expanded genetic code, in ...

When a wound does not heal properly, it leaves a scar. Similarly, mutations—which are permanent changes to genetic code—are ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Recent breakthroughs in genetics research may have uncovered new genes underlying common psychiatric disorders. Schizophrenia and ...

The genetic code acts as life's instruction manual, telling cells how to build proteins from DNA and RNA. Though it's a marvel of molecular precision, the path it took to evolve remains unclear. Fresh ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A scientist examines a sample besides an artistic rendering of DNA structures. - FOTOGRIN/Shutterstock DNA sequencing is one of ...

A group of scientists at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center has revealed a new genetic code that acts like a cancer ringleader, recruiting and deploying a gang of tumor cells to incite a ...

OUR scalp cells sprout hair while the cells lining our nose and lungs make mucus. Our fat cells bloat, our retinal cells turn light into electricity, and our heart cells contract to order. Yet every ...

There are few hard and fast rules in the study of life, but perhaps the closest we get is the central dogma of molecular biology: DNA is transcribed to RNA, which gets translated into proteins. The ...

Synthetic biologists from Yale were able to re-write the genetic code of an organism - a novel genomically recoded organism (GRO) with one stop codon - using a cellular platform that they developed ...