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The invention of the toilet accomplished many good things, but it did rob us of the chance at immortality - through our poop. Ancient humans have revealed some of their greatest secrets through paleofeces, the study of the waste they left behind. More »
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Harold Finch and John Reese track potential crime victims using secret databases and a ubiquitous surveillance infrastructure in the new series Person of Interest. Their world is filled with street corner cameras and espionage — but in the real world, cameras and databases are tracking your every move just as carefully, to the point where you couldn't disappear if you wanted to. More »
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This month marks the 25th anniversary of the discovery of Mitochondrial Eve, a common ancestor of all humanity who helped rewrite the story of human evolution. In honor of this anniversary, we talked to the scientists who started it all. More »
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In late 2010, NASA scientists announced the discovery of microbes in California's Mono Lake that used arsenic instead of phosphorus in their DNA. The study quickly came under intense criticism — and now we may be about to refute it entirely. More »
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Is intelligence related to an increased likelihood of recreational drug use? It's an interesting hypothesis, and one that's been gaining momentum in recent years. More »
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All living organisms use DNA as the carrier of genetic material and RNA as the messenger molecule directing the expression of genes and creation of proteins. This arrangement has lasted 3.5 billion years. But what came before these life-giving molecules? More »
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Any boardwalk palm reader will try and convince you that there's a lifeline on your hand, a marking that can show just how long you're destined to remain on this world. While your palm creases may not actually hold that information, it appears that it may be hiding in your telomeres — the protective DNA caps on the end of chromosomes. More »
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This one goes out to all the chordates in the house. The Rap Guide to Evolution is a musical tour through natural selection, DNA, and all the various processes that have made the world such a hotbed of biodiversity. These may be the only rap videos you see today that namecheck Watson and Crick. More »
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Genome analysts at 23andMe have devised a new way to reveal the secrets inside your DNA. Their latest test will reveal how many of your genes come from Neanderthals. Be warned: some people have a lot of Neanderthal in them. More »
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This really is the week for mathematical bugs. First, one beetle showed us why we live in a universe of despair. Now, another shows us that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong...and the more that things can go wrong, the more things will go wrong. See how a bug proves a knotty conjecture. More »
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All life on Earth is related, which means we all must share a single common evolutionary ancestor. And now it appears that this ancestor might have been a single, planet-spanning organism that lived in a time that predates the development of survival of the fittest. More »
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The artistic skill and attention to detail on display in prehistoric cave paintings is nothing short of astonishing, but one unsolved mystery is whether prehistoric humans simply painted exactly what the saw, or if the art was more symbolic. And recently, we've come a lot closer to answering that question. More »
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Have you ever wondered how an individual molecule really behaves? Recent advances funded by the NIH and NSF have helped us reach the point where scientists can observe individual molecules act when they are isolated from other molecules. Let's take a look at a revolutionary and new way to perform scientific experiments.

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Phylo is a free, browser-based, flash game unveiled in late 2010 by the McGill University Centre for Bioinformatics, which allows you to manipulate stretches of DNA across species in order to perfect existing algorithms. Essentially a pattern matching game, Phylo allows you to choose a puzzle from diseases effecting medical situations you are interested in or would personally like to see treated (like metabolic, cardiovascular, and immune system diseases) or you can select a level based on difficultly. Your level will be generated from data within the UCSC Genome Browser.

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There's one tiny fragment of DNA that pretty much all vertebrates and invertebrates share. It's the only piece of DNA known to be a billion years old — and it still has a role to play in shaping our genes. More »
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The Pacific and Atlantic horn snails were once the same species, until a land bridge blocked their path between oceans. But genetics suggest these snails still interbred long after they were cut off from each other. How? Thanks to the snail-eating birds. More »
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All over your body, lengths of DNA are constantly being bent, wrapped, rent apart, and sealed back together. Scientists have long assumed that the dynamic nature of DNA would also imply that it possesses some degree of "stretchiness," but efforts to determine the stretching force constant of our biological blueprint have turned up incredibly varied results. More »
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We know that as ancient humans expanded into Eurasia, they began interbreeding with our Neanderthal cousins. But it now appears that the fun didn't start there - our ancestors also reproduced with precursors like Homo erectus and Homo habilis. More »
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Antibiotics are one of the greatest breakthroughs of modern medicine, giving us a crucial weapon in the fight against infectious bacteria, but recently we've seen the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now it seems this is a surprisingly ancient phenomenon. More »
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320 million years ago, mammals and reptiles reached an evolutionary parting of the ways. We've now sequenced a lizard genome for the first time ever, and it's vastly different from our own...but in a few crucial ways, it's shockingly similar. More »
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We've suspected it for awhile now, and now it's confirmed that the bacterium Yersinia pestis was responsible for the devastating plague that wiped out a third of Europe 650 years ago. But this ultimate killer started as something far different. More »
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Late last year, we learned that early humans and Neanderthals once shared Eurasia with a third hominin group, known as Denisovans. Now, the new discovery of a Denisovan toe bone might indicate that these three hominin groups were pretty much constantly interbreeding. More »
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We've often found trace evidence of DNA on meteorites, but it wasn't clear whether these DNA pieces originated in space, or were accidental byproducts of contamination by scientists. Now we have our best evidence yet that they actually come from space. More »
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Adermatoglyphia is an incredibly rare genetic condition that causes people to have no fingerprints. It's been nicknamed "immigration delay disease" due to the trouble it causes at border crossings. More »
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Do you have a family history of exceptionally long-living relatives? If you do, congratulations. A recent study suggests that you may be packing "longevity genes" that could allow you to eat, drink, and even smoke like the rest of us and still outlive us all, living well into your 80's, 90's, and beyond. More »
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Most of us wouldn't welcome getting partially eaten by a wild animal — but it could be the best thing that can happen to a plant. More »
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Scientists have found out how a famous sunburn-healing enzyme works. The way it zaps DNA damage sounds so science fictional that it seems like something that happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. More »
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There was once a time when witches could place a curse not only on their enemy, but on their enemy's sons and daughters, stretching on into eternity. Then came the era of science, when what happened to people was a combination of chance, determination, and genetics, and no family curses could touch the young. But now, thanks to epigenetics, we can again blight the accursed seed of our foes. Find out how! More »
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Good morning! Are you drinking tea? For god's sake, spit it out! You don't know what's in there! But now, thanks to some teenage scientists, you will. These intrepid researchers found undisclosed ingredients in tea. More »
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The evidence has been mounting for years that early humans and Neanderthals interbred, but now it's pretty much a certainty. Part of the X chromosome found in people from outside Africa originally comes from our Neanderthal cousins. More »
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Every polar bear alive today shares a common maternal ancestor, and it isn't even a bear from the same species. Their mitochondrial DNA reveals a 100,000 year story of interbreeding and hybridization...and the story is far from over. More »
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The Belly Button Biodiversity project recently began taking DNA samples from people's navels to find out what bacteria is living within. Of the roughly 1,400 bacterial strains discovered thus far, at least 662 of them are completely unknown. More »
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Your spit can pinpoint your age to within five years, making it by far the most accurate age test yet found. This discovery could help identify how old crime scene suspects are, as well as reveal people's true biological ages. More »
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Identical twins don't share exactly the same genetics, but the difference is so small that many DNA tests have trouble distinguishing one twin from another. It turns out the world's most sophisticated genetic tests have nothing on Czech police dogs. More »
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DNA isn't just the building block of all complex life...if you give it about eight hours, DNA can also calculate the square root of 15. It's all explained in this video, which awesomely mixes hardcore science with fairy tale storytelling. More »
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A thousand different ways have been proposed for how humans and computers will someday become one: chips installed in our heads, people's minds uploaded to the internet, you name it. But computers might be perfectly content with just our DNA. More »
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Sea squirts might not look like much...they're simple, hermaphroditic creatures that barely even have a brain. But they have a particular knack for activating the enzyme telomerase, which protects DNA from degradation. That unexpected talent could help fight human aging. More »
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Scientists have begun to use DNA as a building material to make shapes. Usually those shapes are simple, but recently they managed to make a 3D vase out of human DNA. More »
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Lymphoma is a cancer of certain cells in the immune system. Many genes are thought to be associated with it, but scientists have pinpointed a few by making dog DNA into human DNA. More »
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In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in what is now the Bahamas, changing the world forever. But was he first non-indigenous person to reach the Americas? Vikings got there before him, and possibly Polynesians too...and those are just the sane theories. More »
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