The last common ancestor of all living things did not just suddenly appear on Earth roughly 4.2 billion years ago. Some of ...

Scientists call this speck LUCA — the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Since the concept of LUCA first emerged, it has ...

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 ...

About 55% of the human lifespan is heritable, meaning that more than half of the observed variation in longevity across a ...

A research team has developed the "SUPER (Synthetic Upcycling Platform for Engineering Regulators)" platform, which dramatically enhances the performance and stability of gene regulatory devices. This ...

The Gates Foundation denies links to a rise in genetically modified mosquitoes in Kenya, sparking debate over gene drive ...

How much do your genes determine how long you'll live? It's a question that fascinates us, and one that's been debated for ...

People are twice as likely to inherit their lifespan than was previously thought, according to a team of researchers led by scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Israel.The "genetic contribution" to ...

A groundbreaking study suggests that our genes may play a much larger role in our expiration date than we ever imagined.

Termites did not evolve complex societies by adding new genetic features. Instead, scientists found that they became more ...

A gene-edited mouse created with two male parents has now survived to reach adulthood. This is a momentous occasion for genetics, as previous attempts to create bi-paternal mice have failed for a ...

The length of your life may depend more upon your genes than scientists thought. Once you remove from consideration events that cut life short — such as infections and injury — genetics account for ...