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 the ...

Human fertility hinges on a delicate molecular ballet that begins even before birth. UC Davis researchers have uncovered how special protein networks safeguard chromosomes as eggs and sperm form, ...

Scientists at deCODE genetics/Amgen have constructed a complete map of how human DNA is mixed as it is passed down during reproduction. The map marks a major step in the understanding of genetic ...

When the genomes of parents come together to create the genome of a child, their DNA recombines; similar parts are rearranged so that a child carries sections of their parents genomes that have been ...

In most higher organisms, including humans, every cell carries two versions of each gene, which are referred to as alleles. Each parent passes on one allele to each offspring. As they are linked ...

Editor's Note: Molly Przeworski, PhD, creates mathematical models of complex biologic problems to answer questions about population genetics. Dr. Przeworski received the Rosalind Franklin Young ...

The present theory offers a unified solution to three closely related evolutionary problems. (1) Why does an evolving population explore only a small fraction of the accessible pathways in genotype ...