New research reveals that triggering a cell’s DNA damage response could be a promising avenue for developing novel treatments against several rare but devastating viruses for which no antiviral ...

Illinois researchers developed a nanorobotic hand made of DNA that can grab viruses for detection or inhibition. In this artist’s rendering, three “NanoGripper” hands wrap around a COVID-19 virus.

The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of ...

Human DNA is not always making us function in ways we understand. Some of our genome is just there, and we’re not sure what it does. In fact, 8% of our DNA are viruses our ancestors caught one day and ...

CRISPR-Cas9 is a customizable tool that lets scientists cut and insert small pieces of DNA at precise areas along a DNA strand. This lets scientists study genes in a specific, targeted way. (NHGRI via ...

Ancient DNA is turning human evolution into a crime scene reconstruction, and one of the prime suspects is a herpesvirus that quietly slipped into our chromosomes and never left. By tracing this viral ...

The 2024 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research is awarded to Zhijian (James) Chen for his landmark discoveries that explain how DNA stimulates immune responses. DNA is best known as genetic ...

Circular single-stranded DNA viruses represent a diverse group of pathogens that possess a covalently closed, circular single-stranded DNA genome. Their small genomes belie a sophisticated replication ...

Viruses rely on hosts to survive. But some viruses are more effective at reproducing than others. Now, new research has shown that the herpes virus, more specifically herpes simplex virus type 1 ...

People understand that someone can be predisposed to mental illness by inheriting certain genes or gene variants, but new research is revealing that inherited mental illnesses are also promoted by ...

A tiny, four-fingered 'hand' folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to ...