The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of biology. They carry genetic material, but they cannot make proteins on ...

Illinois researchers developed a nanorobotic hand made of DNA that can grab viruses for detection or inhibition. In this artist’s rendering, three “NanoGripper” hands wrap around a COVID-19 virus.

Scientists at the University of Vienna, Austria, have screened great ape specimens obtained from natural history museums to identify DNA viruses. This groundbreaking study provides unique insights ...

Charles Darwin proposed that evolution is driven by gradual variations in organisms that have a survival advantage in a changing environment. But University of Maryland evolutionary biologist Karen ...

Using genomics, evolutionary biologists test several hypotheses on the origin of viruses. New evidence suggests they may have emerged more times than previously thought. Corroborating the virus-first ...