Scientists have discovered a single-celled organism with a fantastically small genome, lacking genes for core metabolic functions, challenging our understanding of what constitutes life.
Nobel Prize winner Svante Pääbo discusses his work in paleogenetics, including sequencing the Neanderthal genome, discovering the Denisovans, and his theories on why Homo sapiens survived while Neanderthals went extinct, attributing it to our larger population size.
Scientists have sequenced a complete genome from ancient Egypt, revealing the man's ancestry was mostly North African with a notable fraction from the Fertile Crescent, supporting a long-suspected cultural link.
Arc Institute develops Evo 2, the largest AI model in biology to date, trained on over 9.3 trillion nucleotides from 128,000 genomes. It can identify disease-causing mutations and design new genomes, with applications in genetic analysis and engineering treatments.
Yizhi 'Patrick' Cai of the University of Manchester is coordinating a global effort to write a complete synthetic yeast genome. The resulting cell would be the artificial life most closely related to humans to date.
