The present theory offers a unified solution to three closely related evolutionary problems. (1) Why does an evolving population explore only a small fraction of the accessible pathways in genotype ...

Scientists at deCODE genetics/Amgen have constructed a complete map of how human DNA is mixed as it is passed down during reproduction. The map marks a major step in the understanding of genetic ...

Conventional wisdom holds that sexual reproduction evolved because it enables organisms to shuffle, or recombine, different alleles (versions of a gene) in the next generation, producing the genetic ...

Evidence is mounting that epigenetic marks on DNA can influence future generations in a variety of ways. But how such phenomena might affect large-scale evolutionary processes is hotly debated. The ...

Understanding biological relationships is often critical when studying animal populations. Researchers have now developed a transformative approach that identifies stretches of DNA that two ...

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes, but by culture. "Human evolution seems to be changing ...

Although the participation of spliceosomes is almost always required for intron removal, a few types of genes have self-splicing RNA introns.