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 ...

The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of ...

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 ...

Ushikuvirus, an amoeba-infecting giant virus, joins the family of giant viruses that may have driven the evolution of complex cells The origin of life on Earth becomes even more fascinating and ...

CRISPR-Cas9 is a customizable tool that lets scientists cut and insert small pieces of DNA at precise areas along a DNA strand. This lets scientists study genes in a specific, targeted way. (NHGRI via ...

In a new study, published in Cell, researchers describe a newfound mechanism for creating proteins in a giant DNA virus, comparable to a mechanism in eukaryotic cells. The finding challenges the dogma ...

Herpes simplex virus partially liquifies the tightly packed, gel-like interior of human cell nuclei to copy itself faster, a new study shows. The research centers on how the nucleus of each human cell ...

Scientists generally agree that eukaryotes, the domain of life whose cells contain nuclei and that includes almost all multicellular organisms, originated from a process involving the symbiotic union ...