The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of biology. They carry genetic material, but they cannot make proteins on ...

Protein structures predicted by artificial intelligence have charted the evolution of the virus family responsible for dengue and hepatitis C. Much of scientists’ understanding of viral evolution is ...

Researchers studying strains of a lethal canine virus and a related human virus have determined why the canine virus was able to spread so quickly from cats to dogs, and then from sick dogs to healthy ...

Viruses acquire genes from eukaryotes — organisms whose cells store their DNA in a nucleus — and use them for their own function. Conversely, eukaryotes acquire genes from viruses to bring new ...

Dr. Cobey studies the interaction of immunity, virus evolution and transmission at the University of Chicago. Dr. Bloom and Dr. Starr study virus evolution at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in ...

Researchers have discovered a previously unknown mechanism by which bacteria share their genetic material through virus parasites. The insights could help scientists to better understand how bacteria ...

In the early, uncertain days of the coronavirus pandemic, scientists delivered one comforting pronouncement: The virus that caused COVID mutates rather slowly. If that remained true, the virus would ...