Take time to smell the roses, the saying goes, and, according to scientists, the fragrant flowers could smell even sweeter in the future.

For the first time researchers have deciphered the full genetic "book" of this most prized of plants, according to BBC.

The secret history of the rose reveals surprises - it is more closely related to the strawberry than we thought.

And in the long term the work could lead to roses with new scents and colours, says an international team.

The new genome map, which took eight years to complete, reveals genes involved in scent production, colour and the longevity of flowers, said Mohammed Bendahmane of ENS de Lyon, in Lyon, France, who led the research.

It's DNA, but not as we know it.

In a world first, researchers have identified a new DNA structure -- called the i-motif -- inside cells. A twisted 'knot' of DNA, the i-motif has never before been directly seen inside living cells, according to Science Daily.

Deep inside the cells in our body lies our DNA. The information in the DNA code -- all 6 billion A, C, G and T letters -- provides precise instructions for how our bodies are built, and how they work.

The iconic 'double helix' shape of DNA has captured the public imagination since 1953, when James Watson and Francis Crick famously uncovered the structure of DNA.

Be careful of the long face when you're around a horse.

The intelligent animals remember grumpy people and avoid them if they meet them at a later date, according to Daily Mail.

Horses are so in tune with human emotion that they can detect, and remember,  subtle changes in the facial expressions of humans, the study found. 

The researchers showed photographs of humans making angry or happy faces to the creatures.

A national park in central Italy is investigating the death of a rare brown bear during an operation to capture it.

Biologists at the park in the Apennine Mountains had trapped the animal to fit him with a radio collar so they could track his movements, according to BBC.

But the male Marsican bear began to struggle to breathe as he was being sedated and died shortly afterwards, despite efforts to revive him.

Seeing an object at the same time that you hear sound coming from somewhere else can lead to the "ventriloquist illusion" and its aftereffect, but research suggests that simply imagining the object produces the same illusory results, according to Science Daily.

"The sensory information we imagine is often treated by the brain in the same way as information streaming in to us from the outside world," says researcher Christopher C. Berger. "Our work shows that what we imagine in our 'mind's eye' can lead to changes in perception across our sensory systems, changing how we perceive real information from the world around us in the future."