A large genetic screen has revealed how stem cells transform into brain cells, exposing hundreds of genes that make this ...

Discover interesting facts about how traits are passed down over generations through DNA. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. What ...

Thanks to increasingly efficient and affordable gene sequencing technologies, we can now chart our genetic blueprint in unprecedented detail. But what does each gene do? Of the roughly 20,000 genes ...

Genome-wide association studies and rare-variant burden tests are the two main tools for discovering links between genetic variants and traits. Comparisons of their results reveal that they ...

Dopamine in the brain influences movement, learning, motivation and sleep. In humans, problems with dopamine are linked to ...

For decades, geneticists have known that most common illnesses are not caused by a single rogue gene but by intricate constellations of DNA variants acting together in specific cells. Now a new ...

Most genes are ancient and shared across species. But a small subset of genes are relative newcomers, spontaneously emerging from stretches of DNA that once encoded nothing at all. Now, after nearly a ...

A new CRISPR breakthrough shows scientists can turn genes back on without cutting DNA, by removing chemical tags that act ...

Dr. Conley is the author of “The Social Genome: The New Science of Nature and Nurture.” Since Francis Galton coined the phrase “nature versus nurture” 150 years ago, the debate about what makes us who ...