SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
THE DNA of domestic cats is bundled up into 38 chromosomes. Each chromosome is a long, tightly packed string of DNA that contains many different genes. The concept of a “gene” as a discrete unit of heredity dates back to before the discovery of DNA.
In the 20th century, it was realised that some regions of DNA are operated on by molecular machines in the cell, turning their encoded sequence into RNA and then into proteins, short-lived molecules that are involved in almost all cellular processes.
These DNA regions are what we now call genes. There is some nuance in this: for example, some regions of a gene are not turned into protein themselves and instead play a role in how exactly this happens.
New research into mutations in sperm helps us better understand why they occur, while debunking a few myths in the process, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
ALEX DITTRICH hitches a ride on a jaw-dropping tour of the parasite world
LOUISE BOURDUA introduces the emotional and narrative religious art of 14th-century Siena that broke with Byzantine formalism and laid the foundations for the Renaissance



