For a long time, evolutionary biologists have thought that the genetic mutations that drive the evolution of genes and proteins are largely neutral: they're neither good nor bad, but just ordinary ...

New imaging reveals a built-in safeguard that allows B cell populations to rapidly expand in germinal centers without introducing deleterious mutations. Germinal centers are high-speed evolution ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The established conservation practice of relocating animals from large, genetically diverse populations to small communities of inbred endangered species may risk introducing more ...

In a review article published in the journal Nature, the authors describe molecular and ecological factors associated with the sudden expansion of H5N1 high-pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) ...

Adverse genetic mutations can cause harm and are due to various circumstances. 'Jumping genes' are one cause of mutations, but cells try and combat them with a specialized RNA called piRNA.

For more than half a century, many biologists have leaned on the neutral theory of molecular evolution to explain how DNA and proteins change over time. The idea grew from early work in the 1960s, ...

In recent years, there has been growing concern over the H5N1 influenza virus. It was first identified in birds three decades ago and has now gradually found its way to humans. H5N1 is a strain of the ...

Germinal centers are high-speed evolution machines. Tiny clusters in the lymph nodes, germinal centers refine antibodies through mutation and expansion until they produce high-affinity B cells adapted ...