Transposable elements have proliferated in the bacterium Enterococcus faecium, altering its metabolism and genome structure.

The human body is full of evolutionary compromises. The loss of the tail may be one of the clearest examples of how change ...

A breakthrough in genetics reveals how spines first appeared, changing what we know about the evolution of complex species.

Most lethal mutations in wild fruit flies are driven by newly transferred jumping genes, not small DNA errors, according to a new study from Duke University. The findings, published in PLOS Biology, ...

A zero due to an “invalid element” resulted in a much lower score than if Amber Glenn had simply fallen. Joosep Martinson / Getty Images MILAN — When Amber Glenn skated in the women’s short program at ...

To understand how organisms are related, researchers use molecular information to construct phylogenetic trees. Most of the time, scientists use thousands of protein-coding sequences to determine ...

The discovery in maize of jumping genes, also known as transposable elements, revolutionised our perception of genome organisation across kingdoms. Transposable elements are mobile small repetitive ...

Evidence indicates that transposable elements (TEs) can contribute to the evolution of new traits, with some TEs acting as deleterious elements while others are repurposed for beneficial roles in ...

Keith Slotkin, PhD, first became interested in transposable elements (TE), colloquially known as “jumping genes,” as an undergraduate student. “They just broke all the rules,” he said in an interview ...

A key protein network that keeps cells safe from dangerous genes has been uncovered. A research team from La Jolla Institute for Immunology (CA, USA), The University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia ...

Twenty-year Carnegie Science veteran and renowned molecular biologist, Nina Fedoroff has left an indelible mark on genetic research and the scientific world at large. We recently caught up with her ...