Ancient DNA is turning human evolution into a crime scene reconstruction, and one of the prime suspects is a herpesvirus that ...

A virus that infects nearly all children early in life has, in rare cases, been present within human DNA for thousands of ...

Researchers have reconstructed ancient herpesvirus genomes from Iron Age and medieval Europeans, revealing that HHV-6 has ...

Neanderthals may have caught the same viruses that cause modern colds, cold sores, and some cancers. It's possible ancient humans introduced these unfamiliar viruses to their relatives. Understanding ...

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 ...

Learn how a newly discovered virus disrupts its host’s nucleus in ways that echo how complex cells may have formed billions ...

Ushikuvirus is a newly identified giant virus that infects amoebas, adding to a growing group of oversized viruses that scientists believe may have played an important role in the emergence of complex ...

The origin of life on Earth becomes even more fascinating and complex as we peer into the mysterious world of viruses.

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 ...

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 ...