What could be more alien than a virus? It’s a nanobiological weapon — a microscopic protein shell holding a few genes that hijack a cell’s internal machinery, forcing it to make new viruses. The battles we fight with these alien enemies brings malaise, scars and even death.

Yet as foreign as viruses may seem, the boundary between us and them is turning out to be remarkably blurry. We use DNA from viruses to do things that are essential to our own survival, scientists are finding. Somehow, we have managed to domesticate some of these invaders.

Continue reading “Study Finds Surprising Benefit of Viral DNA: Fighting Other Viruses” →

Marina Stajic worked for nearly three decades as director of the forensic toxicology lab at the medical examiner’s office in New York City. Last week Dr. Stajic, 66, filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming she had been forced into retirement last year in part because of a disagreement with her superiors over the accuracy of certain DNA tests.

There is more at stake here than Dr. Stajic’s retirement. The cutting-edge technique at the center of this legal dispute, called low copy number DNA analysis, has transformed not just police work, but also a range of scientific fields including cancer biology, in vitro fertilization, archaeology and evolutionary biology. Yet some of the technique’s applications have triggered scientific controversy.

Continue reading “DNA Under the Scope, and a Forensic Tool Under a Cloud” →