Luke Dunning News Today

Why do stressed bats shed more viruses? How do some key species engineer whole landscapes? How do humans and animals work in groups to solve problems, shape behavior? 

Genetically modified (GM) crops may be controversial, but similar processes happen naturally with wild plants. However, scientists have long been puzzled about how these processes happen. Our recent study may help researchers solve the mystery.

Natural gene-transfer discovery made

The co-headline tour of the summer.

According to a new study, grasses can steal DNA from nearby plants, causing a natural genetic mutation that leads to evolutionary advantages such as growing more robustly. Read more here.

The nominees are officially in – who will YOU be voting for?

The nominees are officially in – who will YOU be voting for?

© Shutterstock / Diyana Dimitrova Sign up for our daily newsletter featuring the top stories from The Press and Journal. Thank you for signing up to The Press and Journal newsletter. Something went wrong - please try again later. Sign Up A process of gene borrowing could help boost crop productivity and make crops more resistant to climate change, claim scientists. Research, led by the University of Sheffield, has shown grasses can incorporate DNA from other species into their genomes t...

 E-Mail Grass crops are able to bend the rules of evolution by borrowing genes from their neighbours, giving them a competitive advantage, a new study has revealed. Research, led by the University of Sheffield, is the first to show that grasses can incorporate DNA from other species into their genomes through a process known as lateral gene transfer. The stolen genetic secrets give them an evolutionary advantage by allowing them to grow faster, bigger or stronger and adapt to new environment...

Little did biologist Gregor Mendel know that his experiments with sweet peas in a monastery garden in Brno, Czech Republic, would lay the foundations for our understanding of modern genetics and inheritance. His work in the 19th century helped scientists to establish that parents pass their genetic information onto their offspring, and in turn, they pass it on to theirs. Indeed, this premise forms the basis of much of our understanding of evolution. But we now know that this process is not sac...