A team of Chinese scientists has uncovered a hidden 3D structure in rice DNA that allows the crop to grow more grain while using less nitrogen fertilizer. The finding, published in Nature Genetics by ...

When people think of DNA, they visualize a string-like double helix structure. In reality, the DNA double helix in cells is supercoiled and constrained into loops. This supercoiling and looping are ...

Among the many marvels of life is the cell's ability to divide and thus enable organisms to grow and renew themselves. For this, the cell must duplicate its DNA – its genome – and segregate it equally ...

Scientists from the Kavli Institute of Delft University of Technology and the IMP Vienna Biocenter discovered a new property of the molecular motors that shape our chromosomes. While six years ago ...

DNA has been known to form loops, and these loops have been thought to influence gene expression, recombination, and DNA repair. But according to a new study, DNA loops are rare and fleeting.

The paper M. Ganji et al., “Real-time imaging of DNA loop extrusion by condensin,” Science, doi:10.1126/science.aar7831, 2018. How does a human cell neatly pack ...

Alternative cleavage and polyadenylation (APA) is a gene regulatory mechanism used by cells under stress to upregulate proteostasis-promoting transcripts, but how cells achieve this remains poorly ...

For successful cell division, chromosomal DNA needs to be packed into compact rod-shaped structures. Defects in this process can lead to cell death or diseases like cancer. A new study has shown how ...

Single-letter genetic variations within parts of the genome once dismissed as ‘junk DNA’ can increase cancer risk through 'wormhole-like' effects on far-off genes, new research shows. Researchers ...

Among the many marvels of life is the cell’s ability to divide and thus enable organisms to grow and renew themselves. For this, the cell must duplicate its DNA – its genome – and segregate it equally ...