The exact moment DNA starts to unravel has been seen by scientists for the first time, exposing a chemical process that is essential for DNA to be the molecule that codes for all life.

By creating a more true-to-life representation of DNA's environment, researchers at Northwestern University have discovered that strand separation - the essential process a "resting" double helix ...

The findings visualize for the first time a molecular complex - called CTF18-RFC in humans and Ctf18-RFC in yeast - that loads a "clamp" onto DNA to keep parts of the replication machinery from ...

Journal Reference: Parth Rakesh Desai, John F. Marko. Molecular Crowding Suppresses Mechanical Stress-Driven DNA Strand Separation. Biophysical Journal, 2025; DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2025.04.024 ...

Human DNA is usually shaped like a double helix. However, under certain conditions, a single strand of DNA can fold into a G-quadruplex (G4) structure, which looks like a knot.

An illustration shows the base recognition step in avidity sequencing. One template DNA strand is amplified into many identical copies (gray). An avidity reagent with a fluorescent tag (green ...

DNA, which has a double-helix structure, can have many genetic mutations and variations. Credit: NIH The DNA of human cells consists of a sequence of about 3.1 billion building blocks.

The storage capacity of each DNA strand caps off at roughly 70 bits. For larger files, researchers splintered data into multiple strands identified by unique barcodes encoded in the bricks.

Technology DNA nanobots can exponentially self-replicate Tiny machines made from strands of DNA can build copies of themselves, leading to exponential replication. Similar devices could one day be ...