In humans and many other animals, specific chromosomes determine sex. But how did researchers discover these so-called sex chromosomes? Throughout the many observations that led to this conclusion, ...

Merotelic kinetochore (single kinetochore attaches to microtubules from two spindle poles) has been proposed to be the major mechanism underlying the spontaneous formation of lagging chromosomes, ...

An international research team led by Martin Petr and Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has determined Y chromosome sequences of three ...

Men tend to lose the Y chromosome from their cells as they age. But because the Y bears few genes other than for male ...

A new study sheds light on how organisms have evolved to address imbalances in sex chromosomes. The study looks at a species of softshell turtle, but the results could help to illuminate an important ...

In human cells, DNA carries chemical or "epigenetic" marks that decide how genes will be used in different tissues. Yet in a ...

Triploidy is a condition that affects 1% to 3% of pregnancies. It’s when a developing baby has an extra set of chromosomes, the thread-like structures that carry DNA. A triploidy pregnancy usually ...

Prokaryotes are the group of organisms including bacteria and archaea that do not have a membrane-bound nucleus and instead have a circular, double-stranded molecule of DNA called a nucleoid, that is ...

Around the world, women outlive men. This is true in sickness and in health, in war and in peace, even during severe epidemics and famine. In most animal species, females live longer than males. Dena ...

For the first time, researchers see how proteins grab loops of DNA and bundle them for cell division. The discovery also hints at how the genome folds to regulate gene expression. A human cell carries ...

When a woman becomes pregnant, the outcome of that pregnancy depends on many things — including a crucial event that happened while she was still growing inside her own mother’s womb. It depends on ...