Ancient DNA is turning human evolution into a crime scene reconstruction, and one of the prime suspects is a herpesvirus that quietly slipped into our chromosomes and never left. By tracing this viral ...

Viral DNA that is usually dismissed when sequencing the human genome could help to uncover useful information about complex ...

Neanderthals may have caught the same viruses that cause modern colds, cold sores, and some cancers. It's possible ancient humans introduced these unfamiliar viruses to their relatives. Understanding ...

Ushikuvirus, an amoeba-infecting giant virus, joins the family of giant viruses that may have driven the evolution of complex cells The origin of life on Earth becomes even more fascinating and ...

Neanderthal remains from the Altai Mountains contain human viruses, a team of researchers has found, suggesting that infectious diseases may have been transmitted between anatomically modern humans ...

Scientists estimate that the earliest biological entities began to appear on Earth more than 4 billion years ago. "There was a sort of primordial soup from which certain organic molecules were formed.

People understand that someone can be predisposed to mental illness by inheriting certain genes or gene variants, but new research is revealing that inherited mental illnesses are also promoted by ...