The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of biology. They carry genetic material, but they cannot make proteins on ...

Using genomics, evolutionary biologists test several hypotheses on the origin of viruses. New evidence suggests they may have emerged more times than previously thought. Corroborating the virus-first ...

A giant DNA virus pulled from a Japanese freshwater pond is forcing scientists to rethink how complex cells first acquired their defining feature: the nucleus. Named ushikuvirus, the newly ...

Genetics tools have advanced significantly in recent decades, and have allowed scientist to sequence all of the genetic material they find in any sample. That has enabled researchers to discover giant ...

Around 8 percent of human DNA is made up of genetic sequences acquired from ancient viruses. These sequences, known as human endogenous retroviruses (or Hervs), date back hundreds of thousands to ...

Scientists at the University of Vienna, Austria, have screened great ape specimens obtained from natural history museums to identify DNA viruses. This groundbreaking study provides unique insights ...

New research reveals that triggering a cell’s DNA damage response could be a promising avenue for developing novel treatments against several rare but devastating viruses for which no antiviral ...

DNA scaffolds that mirror influenza virus protein geometry boost antiviral binding and reduce infection more effectively than free molecules, enabling a modular antiviral design strategy. (Nanowerk ...