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If there's one thing potato plants don't like, it's heat. If the temperature is too high, potato plants form significantly lower numbers of tubers or sometimes none at all. Biochemists have now discovered the reason why. If the temperature rises, a so-called small RNA blocks the formation of tubers.

Yale researchers have pinpointed a key reason why people are more likely to get sick and even die from flu during winter months: low humidity.

A new study is providing insight into how the pursuit of starch may have driven evolutionary adaptations in these and other hungry mammals.

In just a few short weeks, tens of thousands of newly minted doctors will start the most intense year of their training: the first year of residency, also called the intern year. A new study suggests that between now and next summer, that experience will make their DNA age six times faster than normal.

Regardless of how much you exercise or how balanced your diet is, controlling your weight is more brain-related than you might have thought. In a recent study, researchers show for the first time in mice that the acyl-CoA-binding protein, or ACBP, has a direct influence on the neurons that allow rodents and humans to maintain a healthy weight.

A global study expands the understanding of activated sludge microbiomes for next-generation wastewater treatment and reuse systems enhanced by microbiome engineering.

Ancient DNA has revealed the mass murder of a large family after the discovery of a mysterious 5000-year-old mass grave in Poland, but there are unusual twists.

Last year, the birth of the first genetically modified babies shook the world. The German Ethics Council now presents a comprehensive ethical investigation into possible interventions in the genome of human embryos or germ cells. The Council does not deem the human germline to be inviolable. It does, however, consider germline interventions to be ethically irresponsible at the present time because of the associated incalculable risks.

Scientists have discovered how mutations in DNA can cause neurodegenerative disease. The discovery is an important step towards better treatment to slow the progression or delay onset in a range of incurable diseases such as Huntington’s and motor neurone disease – possibly through the use, in new ways, of existing anti-inflammatory drugs.

For decades, biologists have also known that cancer cells often have too few or too many copies of some chromosomes, a state known as aneuploidy. In a new study of prostate cancer, researchers have found that higher levels of aneuploidy lead to much greater lethality risk among patients.