The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses ...

Around 45 percent of human DNA is made up of transposable elements, or TEs—genetic leftovers from now-extinct viruses that scientists once believed to be “junk DNA.” But that view is changing, and a ...

Previously unmapped sections of the genome explain how cells sense their mechanical environment and could open new paths for ...

What scientists once dismissed as junk DNA may actually be some of the most powerful code in our genome. A new international study reveals that ancient viral DNA buried in our genes plays an active ...

Proteins sustain life as we know it, serving many important structural and functional roles throughout the body. But these large molecules have cast a long shadow over a smaller subclass of proteins ...

For decades, large stretches of human DNA were dismissed as "junk" and considered to serve no real purpose. In a new study published in Cell Genomics, researchers at Lund University in Sweden show ...

Veronica Paulus is a former STAT intern supported by the Harvard University Institute of Politics. Complex regions of the human genome remained uncharted, even after researchers sequenced the genome ...

Researchers from the University of Hong Kong have discovered that the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a common human virus closely linked to nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), can change the 3D structure of ...