Philip Ball

PHILIP BALL | According to the old story, we once thought that all this other DNA was just “junk,” a term coined in this context in the 1970s. It was accumulated over the course of evolution, for example by viruses inserting their genetic material into ours, and it did nothing useful but just cluttered up our genome the way all our old detritus of a lifetime clutters up our attic.

PHILIP BALL | One sign of this shift is that biology is becoming more ready to accept and to speak of concepts long considered taboo...

PHILIP BALL | Conflicts can in fact be tremendously fertile, alerting us to areas where more work is needed . . .