Lurking among them is a “giant” virus, a genetic behemoth that blurs the line between the living and the inanimate. When this ...

In a quiet freshwater pond in Ibaraki Prefecture near Tokyo, researchers have pulled from the water a microscopic giant that is forcing biologists to rethink how complex life began. The newly ...

A terrifying discovery in the field of vector-borne diseases shows that the Zika virus uses human skin to help mosquitoes spread the disease more widely. "A new study led by Liverpool School of ...

Scientists in Japan have discovered a previously unknown giant virus, offering new insight into this enigmatic category of viruses – and possibly also into the origins of multicellular life. The virus ...

While largely unnoticed, phages do not harm humans. On the contrary, these viruses are gaining increasing popularity as biomedicines to eradicate pathogenic bacteria, especially those associated with ...

During viral reproduction, the influenza polymerase (top left, in blue) scans along the ribonucleoprotein helix to produce messenger RNA. Credit: Science Like a camera-shy teenager, influenza’s ...

Over the last several years, we have experienced an increase of large outbreaks of Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever virus in European countries and neighboring areas. This disease poses a great threat ...

How flu viruses enter cells has been directly observed thanks to a new microscopy technique with the potential to revolutionize research on membrane biology, virus–host interactions and drug discovery ...

Herpes simplex viruses (HSV) are ubiquitous, double‐stranded DNA viruses that establish lifelong infections in human hosts. Central to their cycle is the process of membrane fusion, which permits ...

The human genome is massive, and it contains many highly repetitive sequences that confounded researchers for years. Many of these repeats were simply written off as junk DNA that had no function.