Spider silk is lightweight and stretchy yet has tensile strength greater than steel. Its chemistry is just as fascinating. Silk proteins, called spidroins, must convert from a soluble form to…

Physicists have identified a mechanism that may help explain Zipf's law – a unique pattern of behavior found in disparate systems, including complex biological ones. Their mathematical models…

Your stress levels may be another thing you can blame on your mother. Scientists investigating pregnancies in four generations of rats show that inherited epigenetic effects of stress could…

Tuber melanosporum - black or Périgord truffles - are fungi that grow in symbiosis with the roots of oak and hazelnut trees. In the world of haute cuisine, they are expensive and highly prized.…

Credit: University of Arizona Researchers have sequenced the complete genome of Oryza glaberrima (African rice), which will enhance scientists' and agriculturalists' understanding of the growing…

About 15% of adults suffer from fertility problems, primarily due to genetic factors. This is something of an evolutionary paradox; wouldn't natural selection have caused people with infertility to…

Using data from over 18,000 patients, scientists have identified more than two dozen genetic risk factors involved in Parkinson's disease, including six that had not been previously reported. …

In 2012, scientists involved in the ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) project stated that 80% of our genome is functional - that it has some biochemical function.  The finding was…

Researchers have successfully used a new and potentially safer method to stimulate ovulation in women undergoing IVF treatment.  One in six couples in the UK experiences infertility, and 48,147…

The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium recently published a chromosome-based draft sequence of wheat's genetic code - its genome. The genetic blueprint of bread wheat, also known as…