A new paper has taken a ingenious route towards treating cocaine addicted mice – by developing a CRISPR-powered skin grafts that produce an anti-cocaine enzyme.

It's a really important step to understanding the subtle ways genes actually work. In 2003, researchers sequenced the human genome for the first time, writing out all 3 billion of the DNA base pairs that dictate every aspect of our makeup. Now, a new team of researchers has figured out a way to create a 3D image of this valuable roadmap to human biology.

A lack of regulation has created enormous genetic families. Now they are searching for one another.

Less than 5 percent of elephants die from cancer, and researchers may have finally figured out why. According to a study from The University of Chicago, elephants produce "zombie genes" that can help protect the animal from cancer. Here's how it works: Humans and other animals carry one copy of a "master tumor suppressor" gene. Elephants have 20 copies. Scientists found that gene can trigger a "zombie gene" to come back to life with a new purpose: killing cells in damaged DNA.

After roaming Europe and Asia for more than a hundred thousand years, cave bears died out some 24,000 years ago, after a millennia-long death spiral possibly spurred by hunting, natural climate change, and competition with humans for habitat.

Sequencing the wheat genome – once considered by scientists to be an insurmountable task – has been achieved through a worldwide collaboration of researchers spanning 13 years. On Friday the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) published a detailed description of the genome of bread wheat in the journal Science.

In 2011, Sonia Vallabh was handed a genetic report that contained a death sentence. But it also held a map for how to escape. Her body, she learned, harbored a gene mutation, a single wrong letter of DNA in her “prion” gene, that would eventually lead to a rare brain condition called fatal familial insomnia. Her mother had died of it the year before, and the test had revealed Vallabh had inherited the flaw too.

Researchers explore genetic “scores” that may predict educational success.The work, which involved DNA from 1.1 million people and researchers drawn from 40 institutions, led to a scoring system that can roughly predict how educated someone is by examining that person’s DNA. Those with the lowest genetic scores had only a 10 percent chance of having graduated from college. By contrast, those in the highest quintile of genetic promise did so 50 percent of the time.

Want to see something that makes scientists gasp? Feast your eyes on this video, showing a direct observation of CRISPR-Cas9 munching up a piece of DNA.

When Jason Shepherd first saw the structures under a microscope, he thought they looked like viruses. The problem was: he wasn’t studying viruses. Shepherd studies a gene called Arc which is active in neurons, and plays a vital role in the brain. A mouse that’s born without Arc can’t learn or form new long-term memories. If it finds some cheese in a maze, it will have completely forgotten the right route the next day.

My grandfather was caramel-skinned with black eyes and thick, dark hair, and until he discovered that he was adopted, he had no reason to suspect that he was not the son of two poor Mexicans as he’d always been told. When he found his adoption papers, according to family lore, he pestered the nuns at the Dallas orphanage where he had lived as an infant for the name of his birth mother. Name in hand, at 10 years old, he hopped a bus to Pennsylvania, met his birth mother, and found out that he was actually Syrian.

Irish people’s DNA was previously thought to be very homogeneous, but new research suggests they may have much more genetic influence from other groups. Experts believe that a majority of Irish people have Celtic roots; however, a study published on Thursday found they may also have a great deal of influence from the Vikings, Anglo-Normans, and British.

The traditional view of early-human dispersal is outdated as new research is revealing a much more complex picture of Homo sapiens.

Scientists have successfully tweaked the DNA in human heart cells to correct mutations that cause a deadly disease. If the gene-editing technique is proven safe, it could permanently cure children with a genetic disorder that leaves them wheelchair-bound by their early teens. The genetic disease targeted in this study is called Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a disorder that affects about one in 5,000 males and causes the progressive wasting away of skeletal and heart muscles.

Two new papers show that an ancient virus hiding out in the human brain may play a critical role in conscious thought.

Growing human organs inside other animals has taken another step away from science-fiction, with researchers announcing they have grown sheep embryos containing human cells. Scientists say growing human organs inside animals could not only increase supply, but also offer the possibility of genetically tailoring the organs to be compatible with the immune system of the patient receiving them, by using the patient’s own cells in the procedure, removing the possibility of rejection.

Here's a look at how genome sequencing works, the computing techniques that make it possible, and the impact it is expected to have on human health.

New study shows the world’s only “wild” horses have domesticated ancestors

As any mother will tell you, having kids does a lot to a person’s body—and new research suggests it may even change a woman on a cellular level. Sections of genetic material associated with lifespan called telomeres are shorter in women who have given birth, according to a paper published February 14 in Human Reproduction. Specifically, the telomeres of women who have had children are as short as if they were childless and 11 years older.

Researchers assembled 5 million family trees using data from the website Geni.com to test several genetic and historical hypotheses.

Geneticists built a family tree linking millions of people across 300 years.

A research team peering into the relatively underexplored "junk" DNA of mammals has found more clues as to elephants' extraordinary ability to evade cancer - and determined that the genes responsible for mitigating damage in elephant cells can also b

Right before I turned five, I went to the eye doctor for the first time. I even wrote about it in my kindergarten journal: “I am going to get galassis! I am so aixidad!” (I was a complicated speller.) At that appointment, I was diagnosed with vitelliform macular dystrophy, a degenerative eye disease also known as “Best disease.” Which doesn’t make a ton of sense because Best disease causes my eyesight to get worse and worse over time. It’s a lot like age-related macular degeneration, but it’s genetic, and my vision could deteriorate at any time, not just when I’m 80.

It helps us to make close connections with people, and influences how we behave in a range of situations, from the workplace to a party. Now scientists say empathy is not just something we develop through our upbringing and life experiences - it is also partly inherited. A study of 46,000 people found evidence for the first time that genes have a role in how empathetic we are.

“This is a breakthrough paper,” one expert in ancient DNA says of the new findings, which identified Denisovan genes in Southeast Asia.

Little hints of immortality are lurking in the stem cells of fruit flies. Stem cells that produce sperm use a genetic trick to stay perpetually young across generations, researchers at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute have discovered. Certain sections of the fruit fly genome get shorter with age. But remarkably, some reproductive cells can repair the shrinkage, the researchers report in the journal eLife.

We did this. By David Nield.

A scientific journal has retracted a controversial paper, published last year, that suggested the gene-editing tool CRISPR was a genome wrecking ball. In the retracted study, researchers sought to use CRISPR in mice to correct a mutation that causes blindness. They successfully fixed the genetic error but reported that CRISPR inadvertently made more than a thousand other changes—potentially harmful ones—in the animals’ DNA.

A ban on creating human organs inside the bodies of animals will likely be lifted as early as this autumn, following a planned review of the current guidelines prohibiting such research. An expert panel of the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry last month compiled a report on research into producing human organs in the bodies of pigs and other animals.

Europe will see its first genetically engineered patients using a groundbreaking gene-splicing therapy this year after regulators approved trials. The biotech company Crispr Therapeutics is hoping to cure the disease beta thalassaemia, a devastating blood disorder which reduces the production of haemoglobin, the protein which carries oxygen to cells. Without sufficient oxygen, sufferers can be left with bone deformities, severe anaemia, slow growth, fatigue and shortness of breath.

Depression affects approximately 322 million people worldwide, making it the largest contributor to global disability. However, the fact that depression is an actual illness rather than a mood is only beginning to gain traction. Advances in the genetic basis of depression is helping that happen: In 2015 scientists discovered the first two genetic markers linked to the development of major depressive disorder, and on Monday, researchers reported in a new study that the genetic link is even more profound.

Biomedical engineers have used a CRISPR/Cas9 genetic engineering technique to turn off a gene that regulates cholesterol levels in adult mice, leading to reduced blood cholesterol levels and gene repression lasting for six months after a single treatment. This marks the first time researchers have delivered CRISPR/Cas9 repressors for targeted therapeutic gene silencing in adult animal models. The study appears in Nature Communications.

We're at the point in DNA technology where individuals who – having parted with $99 and a small vial of saliva – may suddenly find themselves in a criminal investigation.

The forensic use of DNA is rightly regarded as one of the most reliable ways of establishing the identity of someone who was present at a crime scene. As technology has advanced, it is possible to use extremely small traces of genetic material to...

It's so small it can’t be seen with the naked eye, but research is showing that CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is bringing sight to the blind.