DNA is fundamental to the biology of all life on Earth, but how many of us actually know what it is or what it's made of?

The DNA of some viruses doesn’t use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this exception is possible and hints that it could be more common than we think. All life ...

Additions to DNA’s four-letter alphabet have been announced before, but the new letters don’t always fit comfortably into DNA’s double helix. Even slightly awkward letters can distort DNA ...

Because the nucleotide bases that make up DNA bind in a known way (adenine binds to thymine, and guanine binds to cytosine), the scientists can add hundreds of short sequences of complementary DNA ...

DNA consists of two strands, arranged in a double helix. These strands are made up of subunits called nucleotides. Each nucleotide contains a phosphate, a 5-carbon sugar molecule and a nitrogenous ...

To date, people have encoded information into DNA the same way nature has, by linking the four nucleotide bases comprising DNA—A, T, C, and G—into a particular genetic sequence.

Nucleotide excision repair is a widespread mechanism for repairing damage to DNA and recognizes multiple damaged bases. This mechanism is used to repair the formation of pyrimidine dimers from UV ...

DNA barcodes are a sequence of nucleotide bases that provide a unique tag to the labeled cells. ... For instance, a barcode of eight bases will generate 4,096 unique sequences.

In 2012, Balasubramanian launched Cambridge Epigenetix, a company developing technologies that sense DNA methylation and other modifications of DNA’s four nucleotide bases during sequencing.