Your ability to listen to a phone message in one ear while a friend is talking into your other ear—and comprehend what both are saying—is an important communication skill that’s heavily influenced by…

Scientists at the University of Bonn, together with colleagues from Romania, have discovered a gene variant that significantly increases the risk of developing gallstones. It is estimated that one…

Back in June, John Greally, a biologist at Albert Einstein, wrote a frustrating Nature commentary on the ENCODE project in which he repeatedly and wrongly suggested that before ENCODE, biologists…

Johns Hopkins researchers have added to the growing mound of evidence that many of the genetic bits and pieces that drive evolutionary changes do not confer any advantages or disadvantages to humans…

Vertebrate genomes are full of junk. Despite the occasional confusing magazine article, the spurious claims by creationists, or obfuscatory statements by some scientists, we know that our genomes are…

Italian flies behave completely differently from English ones – and the difference lies in their genes, a new study from the University of Leicester has discovered. The finding in the world renowned…

Artificially replicating the male genome could help men with very low sperm counts become fathers, a scientist told the 23rd annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and…

How does a cell process information? Unlike computers, with CPUs to carry out calculations, and animals, which have brains that process sensory information, cells have no centralized device for…

Biologists at the University of California, Riverside have identified the genes, and determined the DNA sequences, for two key proteins in the "dragline silk" of the black widow spider - an advance…

Size matters. At least, it does to an alpine ibex. According to a team of international researchers, mature, male alpine ibex demonstrate a correlation between horn growth and genetic diversity.…