The human genome consists of 3 billion base pairs, and when a cell divides, it takes about seven hours to complete making a copy of its DNA. That's almost 120,000 base pairs per second. At that ...

Researchers have discovered how cells activate a last-resort DNA repair system when severe damage strikes. When genetic tangles overwhelm normal repair pathways, cells flip on a fast but error-prone ...

Scientists have created a live-cell DNA sensor that reveals how damage appears and disappears inside living cells, capturing the entire repair sequence as it unfolds. Instead of freezing cells at ...

In a quiet lab at Utrecht University, researchers have built a tool that lets you watch one of life’s most serious crises unfold in real time. Inside every cell, DNA breaks, repairs, and sometimes ...

If severe DNA damage is not repaired, the consequences for the health of cells and tissues are dramatic. A study led by ...

The DNA inside our cells is constantly being damaged, and one of the worst kinds of damage is a double-strand break-when both sides of the DNA helix are cut at once. Healthy cells can normally fix ...

A clump of proteins seems to be in charge of the level of DNA repair that takes place in our bodies, determining how fast mutations accumulate in our cells over a lifetime – and might thus affect our ...