From epic poetry to game shows, from Stone Age axes to spaceflight, humans have the most complex cultures of any species on Earth. Since the time of Darwin, scientists have suspected that this culture ...

Life’s story may stretch further back than scientists once thought. Some genes found in nearly every organism today were already duplicated before all life shared a common ancestor. By tracking these ...

Scientists have uncovered an unexpected genetic shift that may explain how animals with backbones first emerged and became so diverse.

Findings suggest that new genes can form by repurposing fragments of ancestral genes while incorporating entirely new coding regions (the protein-coding parts of the DNA). This innovative concept ...

De novo gene evolution describes the process by which entirely new genes originate from previously non-coding DNA rather than from the duplication and divergence of existing genetic material. This ...

The evolution of new genes is not the only way for a species to change. The loss of genes may also lead to adaptations that help species survive, but this idea has not been well studied. Now, ...

For a long time, evolutionary biologists have thought that the genetic mutations that drive the evolution of genes and proteins are largely neutral: they're neither good nor bad, but just ordinary ...

Flax is a globally important crop valued for its fiber, industrial uses, and omega-3-rich oil, yet incomplete genomic information has long limited efforts to understand and improve its key traits.

For millennia, evolution has intrigued many great thinkers, prompting questions about how new traits emerge as species adapt over time. Then, attention shifted to natural selection and the inheritance ...

Researchers at the School of Biological Sciences of The University of Hong Kong (HKU) have uncovered how eukaryotic cells can ...