Scientists were able to identify chromosomes under the microscope as early as the 19th century. But what did it take for them to figure out how important chromosomes really are?

Jenny Graves receives funding from the Australian Research Council. If you look at cells from a human or other mammal under a microscope, you’ll see big fat molecular complexes called chromosomes that ...

As the cell proceeds through the stages of cell division (from left to right: interphase, prometaphase, metaphase, and anaphase), chromosomes become progressively more compact through a combination of ...

M arie Delattre, a biologist at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, has studied the nematode Mesorhabditis belari for nearly a decade now. The microscopic worm first caught her attention for its ...

Many animals use a special pair of chromosomes to determine their sex during development, but how did this system evolve? Where did these chromosomes come from and how do they change over time?

Chromosomes are thread-like structures located inside the nucleus of animal and plant cells. Each chromosome is made of protein and a single molecule of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Passed from ...

Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used machine learning to automate the identification of defects in sister chromatid cohesion. They trained a convolutional neural network (CNN) with ...

Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get you as enthralled with the wonders of the universe as she is. When she's not daydreaming about flying through space, she's daydreaming ...

The X and Y chromosomes make an unlikely pair. The X is large and contains thousands of genes critical for life. The Y, by contrast, is small, with only a handful of genes. Its main purpose is to ...

In Denmark, more and more people are experiencing problems with fertility. In more than half of the miscarriages that occur during the first 12 weeks, it is because the fetus has a chromosome defect.