Genetics & epigenetics

Inherited sequence patterns within telomeres help determine the length of individual chromosome ends. Removing these variants with CRISPR changed the length of one specific telomere.

A study of more than a million people identified 1,260 genetic variants associated with the Big Five personality traits. The genetic signal is robust, but DNA still predicts an individual’s personality only poorly.

After widespread DNA breaks in glioblastoma cells, changes in 3D genome organization, gene expression and epigenetic marks remained detectable for at least two weeks.

A deep-learning framework called Melody learned to predict methylation patterns from 10-kb DNA sequence windows across 39 normal human cell types, while a transcriptome-informed version extended the approach to unseen cell types.

Researchers programmed CRISPR-Cas9 to distinguish one of three copies of chromosome 21 and promote its loss in trisomic human cells. The study is a compelling proof of concept, not a treatment for Down syndrome.

Photo 51 became the symbol of Rosalind Franklin’s contribution to the discovery of DNA’s structure. Yet it was not a ready-made image of the double helix: her measurements, calculations and analysis were equally important.

LINE-1 does not always complete a conventional insertion. Cell experiments show that its unfinished DNA copies can recombine with distant chromosome breaks or with one another, producing translocations, inversions and deletions.

Mendel uncovered basic patterns of inheritance through pea experiments. Here is how his laws work and why modern genetics is more complex.

Half of a person’s nuclear DNA comes from the mother and half from the father. Yet most of our cells contain another, much smaller genome that follows a different inheritance pattern. This…

In October 1587, Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, suddenly developed a severe fever. He died a few days later. His wife, Bianca Cappello, died at nearly the same time. It…