In the children’s game telephone, a whispered phrase like “I ate a pear” can quickly become “I hate bears” as it moves down a line of players. As genes are passed down from parents to offspring, they ...

ANN ARBOR—For a long time, evolutionary biologists have thought that the genetic mutations that drive the evolution of genes and proteins are largely neutral: they're neither good nor bad, but just ...

Geneticists have sought to understand the impact of genetic mutations, and what drives and maintains changes in DNA. Researchers have now reconstructed the evolution of a set of genes, and the ...

The search space for protein engineering grows exponentially with complexity. A protein of just 100 amino acids has 20100 ...

(Memphis, Tenn.—July 28, 2023) The influenza (flu) virus is constantly undergoing a process of evolution and adaptation through acquiring new mutations. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research ...

In the depths of the ocean, where there’s no sunlight and the pressure could crush a submarine, a handful of animals have quietly rewritten their DNA to withstand these conditions. According to a new ...

Yet modern biology has revealed that cells are preternaturally sophisticated assemblages — literally automated, miniaturized factories. How could the evidence have been overwhelming but now orthodoxy ...

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In a recent study published in the bioRxiv* preprint server, researchers analyzed the characteristics of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron subvariants BA.4, BA.5, ...

Junior Associate Professor Kazuo Takayama (Department of Cell Growth and Differentiation) and a collaborative team of researchers in Japan recently characterized SARS-CoV-2 collected from a persistent ...

Dr. Cobey studies the interaction of immunity, virus evolution and transmission at the University of Chicago. Dr. Bloom and Dr. Starr study virus evolution at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in ...