Dna

Life is a far richer, more complicated affair than we imagined

20 January 2024 9:00 am

Exploring the new biology, Philip Hall explains how genes do not in fact determine our fate, and how cells can be reprogrammed to perform all kinds of new tasks

The best of this year’s gardening books

4 November 2023 9:00 am

Authors reviewed include Jinny Blom on design, Jenny Joseph on scented plants, Maury C. Flannery on herbaria and Francis Pryor on his Fenland haven

There’s no end to the wonders of the human body, says Bill Bryson

9 November 2019 9:00 am

Bill Bryson has come a long way from being the funniest, most irreverent travel writer around. He’s still as amiable,…

Can anyone get away with murder anymore?

6 April 2019 9:00 am

When the 24-year-old Angela Gallop started working at the Home Office forensic science service, her boss lost no time in…

The massive NHS plan to record every single person’s DNA

2 February 2019 9:00 am

‘Gene test for sale on NHS,’ blared the headlines last weekend, sparking some anxiety and confusion. The story is that…

The majority of sexual encounters in giraffes involve two males necking

Humans are animals, and our extinction is inevitable – but we’re still pretty amazing

22 September 2018 9:00 am

Ever since enlivenment of the primordial blob, before thoughts were first verbalised, all nature has always been motivated by a…

Forget your data – it’s your DNA privacy you should be worried about

12 May 2018 9:00 am

Nearly ten years ago, a lorry driver known only as ‘Michael Harry K’ adopted an extreme response to combating what…

The head of Jeremy Bentham, who died in 1832

What can we learn from Jeremy Bentham’s pickled head?

18 November 2017 9:00 am

Under the central dome of UCL — an indoor crossroads where hordes of students come and go on their way…

How Siddhartha Mukherjee gets it wrong on IQ, sexuality and epigenetics

28 May 2016 9:00 am

A clear, accurate, up-to-date pop science book on genetics would have been most welcome, says Stuart Ritchie. Sadly, this isn’t it

Devastation after the collapse of the Twin Towers (Photo: Getty)

How trauma is passed down through the generations in our DNA

23 April 2016 9:00 am

Sue Armstrong’s programme on Radio 4 All in the Womb (produced by Ruth Evans) should be required listening for anyone…

The return of eugenics

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Scientists don’t want to use the word. That hasn’t stopped them running ahead with the idea

Playing it cool: Nicole Kidman as Rosalind Franklin

Nicole Kidman is upstaged by everyone - even the set: Photograph 51 at the Noel Coward reviewed

26 September 2015 8:00 am

Michael Grandage’s latest show is about an old snap. Geneticists regard the X-ray of the hydrated ‘B’ form of DNA…

The unentertaining fact is that resurrecting animals that died out 65 million years ago is likely to remain far beyond the bounds of possibility for a very long time to come

If we recreate the mammoth, it will be 99.999 per cent white elephant

16 May 2015 9:00 am

Years ago, in an ill-conceived attempt to break into natural history radio, I borrowed a nearly dead car from a…

Simon Barnes’s final chapters converge not at mammals, even less at primates, but at fish

From water-dwelling sponges to face-eating hyenas: the whole of life is in this book

15 November 2014 9:00 am

‘The meaning of life’, announces Simon Barnes in the opening pages of his new book, ‘is life, and the purpose…

Spectator letters: America as a genetic experiment, and a gypsy reply to Rod Liddle

24 May 2014 9:00 am

An independent policy Sir: James Curran’s review of my book Dangerous Allies (‘Radical nationalist’, 17 May) showed a significant and…

Revealed: how exam results owe more to genes than teaching

27 July 2013 9:00 am

New research by Professor Robert Plomin shows genes are more important than we like to think