If you are anything like us, whenever you plan a journey, you spend a remarkable amount of time thinking about the start and the middle. Is everything packed? What time should we leave? Will there be ...

Chemists at UCL and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology have demonstrated how RNA (ribonucleic acid) might have replicated itself on early Earth—a key process in the origin of life. Scientists ...

As antibiotic-resistant infections rise and are projected to cause up to 10 million deaths per year by 2050, scientists are looking to bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, as an alternative.

Your DNA is continually damaged by sources both inside and outside your body. One especially severe form of damage called a double-strand break involves the severing of both strands of the DNA double ...

A chemical modification in the HIV-1 RNA genome whose function has been a matter of scientific debate is now confirmed to be key to the virus's ability to survive and thrive after infecting host cells ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In 1957, just four years after Francis Crick and other scientists solved the riddle of ...

CRISPR’s rise from obscure bacterial defense system to molecular scalpel has always hinged on one small component: the guide RNA. For years, that guide RNA—meticulously designed, modified, and ...