Researchers have found double-stranded DNA uses complementary electrostatic attraction to recognize and seek out identical DNA in solution.

Although the capacity for single complementary strands of DNA to attract each other is probably the best-known and most fundamental property of DNA, no one knew until now that intact, double-stranded DNA could do this too.

The unexpected finding could shed new light on how DNA repairs itself, how diseases such as cancer result from the miscopying of DNA, and how genes become tweaked during evolution.