By now, it’s firmly established that modern humans and their Neanderthal relatives met and mated as our ancestors expanded out of Africa, resulting in a substantial amount of Neanderthal DNA scattered throughout our genome. Less widely recognized is that some of the Neanderthal genomes we’ve seen have pieces of modern human DNA as well.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. HERVs, or human endogenous retroviruses, make up around 8% of the human genome, left behind as a result of infections that humanity’s primate ancestors suffered millions of years ago.

NIH funding has allowed scientists to see the DNA blueprints of human life—completely. In 2022, the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium, a group of NIH-funded scientists from research institutions around the world, including Johns Hopkins, achieved a ...

In June, 2025, the Wellcome Trust announced an ambitious £10 million UK project called the Synthetic Human Genome Project (SynHG) and claimed it “will unlock a deeper understanding of life, leading to profound impacts on biotechnology,

Human DNA constantly refolds in 3D space, and these looping dynamics regulate gene expression and cell identity.

Viruses are entirely dependent on their hosts to reproduce. They ransack living cells for parts and energy and hijack the host's cellular machinery to make new copies of themselves. Herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1), it turns out, also redecorates, according ...

It is still not fully understood how, despite having the same set of genes, cells turn into neurons, bones, skin, heart, or roughly 200 other kinds of cells, and then exhibit stable cellular behavior over a human life span which can last for more than a ...

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) can cause certain types of cancer or autoimmune diseases, but how the body controls this common viral infection is largely unknown. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have now identified genetic and non-genetic factors that

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) can cause certain types of cancer or autoimmune diseases, but how the body controls this common viral infection is largely unknown. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have now identified genetic and non-genetic factors that help the body fight EBV.