DNA

New technology, donated by the Dutch holding company Qiagen, enables scientists to better extract DNA from “even challenging bone samples. Ones that are decades old.”

“Everybody whose genetic roots are outside Africa are partly descended from Neanderthals,” one geneticist says.

European colonists to the Americas brought with them illnesses that devastated indigenous communities. New research explores this history in the genetic record.

With rhinos on the verge of extinction, conservationists are turning to novel efforts to prevent poaching. Enforcement agents in South Africa are now using a DNA database to help them identify the origins of seized rhino horn.

Even with good intentions and legitimate potential medical applications, gene research poses ethical debate and concern among scientists, many of whom have called for a worldwide moratorium on its use. That’s no different for a new method called CRISPR, which is splitting scientific opinion.