biology
![Brian Piercy](data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="%230A66C2"><path d="M20.447 20.452H16.89v-5.569c0-1.328-.027-3.037-1.852-3.037-1.853 0-2.136 1.445-2.136 2.939v5.667H9.351V9h3.414v1.561h.046c.477-.9 1.637-1.85 3.37-1.85 3.601 0 4.267 2.37 4.267 5.455v6.286zM5.337 7.433a1.982 1.982 0 1 1 0-3.964 1.982 1.982 0 0 1 0 3.964zm1.782 13.019H3.555V9h3.564v11.452zM22.225 0H1.771C.792 0 0 .774 0 1.729v20.542C0 23.227.792 24 1.771 24h20.451C23.2 24 24 23.227 24 22.271V1.729C24 .774 23.2 0 22.222 0h.003z"/></svg>)
While some bacteriophages play vital roles in laboratory research, others are bent on sabotage.
A step-by-step guide to making de novo binders.
How to “read” nucleic acids, from Sanger to nanopores.
Conservation has traditionally ignored the planet's smallest life forms. Microbiologists are trying to change that — before it's too late. Microbes make life on Earth possible, yet human activity is wiping these microbiomes out — and science is only beginning to grasp the potential implications.
The secrets to extending human lifespans might lie in the animals that can already live for centuries.
Despite their outsize hold on popular imagination, Venus flytraps are native to a tiny corner of the globe: the Coastal Plain of the Carolinas. As development threatens, one town—spurred on by one tireless botanist—has taken up the shovel to save the world’s most fascinating plant.
The newly described microbe represents a world of parasitic, intercellular biodiversity only beginning to be revealed by genome sequencing.
How aquaporin and potassium channels filter hundreds of millions of water molecules or ions each second, by positioning the correct amino acid in the perfect place.
It is our biggest blind spot, a bizarre experience that befalls us every day, and can’t be explained by our need for rest
Scientists are searching for the secret in Doug Whitney’s biology that has protected him from dementia, hoping it could lead to ways to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s for many other people.
When something dies, a telltale radioactive signal ticks like a natural clock. Discovering it helped us solve all sorts of natural mysteries.
In 4,000 years, cataract surgery went from a crude procedure involving thorn instruments to a 20-minute operation with a 95 percent clinical success rate. The next step is broadening access.
Mary Roach unpacks the millennia-long effort to replace failing body parts—and the reasons that modern medicine still struggles to match the original designs.
You carry literal pieces of your mom—and maybe your grandma, and your siblings, and your aunts and uncles.
Genetic and anatomical data reveal how the human pelvis acquired its unique shape, enabling our ancestors to walk on two legs.
A single E. coli bacterium weighs about one picogram, 60 million times less than a grain of sand. But how do we know?
The effects of insufficient water are felt by every cell in the body, but it’s the brain that manifests our experience of thirst.
Humans have a long history of diving to forage from the seabed and today elite freedivers are reaching greater depths than ever. Some researchers argue humans belong in the sea.
A new study looked into the axolotl’s freakish regenerative talents, hoping to uncover secrets that could revolutionize human medicine.
The idea of cryonics — freezing the bodies of the dead in the hopes that they can one day be revived — has existed since the 1960s. We’ve since learned that perfect preservation is much, much harder than any of its founders anticipated.
By speedrunning ecosystems with microbes, researchers revealed intrinsic properties that may make a community susceptible to invasion.
"A set of experimental techniques and technologies that might seem harmful to trees is actually helping ancient forests survive."
While we know how to break organisms down to their constituent parts, even at the atomic level, building them from scratch remains difficult.
Two physical constraints help explain why cells are so tiny: surface area-to-volume ratios and diffusion. The first article in our new Data Series.
One of the most valuable substances in the world has never been replicated. Are we close?
Creating mirrored organisms using synthetic biology could seriously harm extant life, a 300-page report claims. While the risks from mirrored life are uncertain, it is best not to find out.
Some organisms truck along slowly for aeons before suddenly surging into dominance – and something similar often happens with human inventions, too. But why?
Most mammals, including our closest living relatives, have fur. So why did we lose ours?
Are invisible aliens living among us in shadow biospheres? Is extraterrestrial life hiding in plain sight?
Behold choanoflagellates, tiny creatures that can be one body and many bodies all at once.
In biology class, biology wasn't presented as a quest for the secrets of life. The textbooks wrung out the questing.
Open source code for AlphaFold.
A new federal facility in Kansas will house the deadliest agricultural pathogens in the world—and researchers working tirelessly to contain them.
Homo sapiens has a throwing arm that sets it apart. Athletes are helping anthropologists understand this prowess.
Deer can regrow their antlers, and humans can replace their liver. What else might be possible?
Whose body was harvested to create a spectacular anatomical specimen, and did that person know they would be on display more than a century later?
The zoologist Arik Kershenbaum argues that because some evolutionary challenges are truly universal, life throughout the cosmos may share certain features.
A family in Bangladesh struggles with an extremely rare genetic condition, "immigration delay disease".
The state loses a football field’s worth of land every hour and a half. Now engineers are in a race to prevent it from sinking into oblivion.
Sometimes a flower is just a flower, and sometimes it's a powerful vehicle for giving free rein to our worst colonialist and misogynist impulses.
“Recalcitrant” seeds hold the secret to saving a critically endangered Indian tree—thanks to a bit of human help
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A journey to the underwater volcanoes where life may have erupted.
For a core of longevity true believers, the time to intervene is now.
“Stimulating” it leads to calmness, but how and why?
When a creature mysteriously turns up dead in Alaska—be it a sea otter, polar bear, or humpback whale—veterinary pathologist Kathy Burek gets the call. Her necropsies reveal cause of death and causes for concern as climate change frees up new pathogens and other dangers in a vast, thawing north.
Grant Hadwin got a chainsaw and did something terrible.
Editing the epigenome, which turns our genes on and off, could be the “elixir of life.”
A fundamental understanding of what pain is continues to evade scientists.
Is the genetically engineered chestnut tree an act of ecological restoration or a threat to wild forests?
Humans and other mammals and birds would have been killed many times over by Chernobyl's radiation that plants in the most contaminated areas received. So why is plant life so resilient to radiation and nuclear disaster?
A researcher who works through painting tells her story.
Checkout one of the oldest terrarium gardens in the world! Read the story of David Latimer's sealed bottle ecosystem from the 1960's.
The long read: In my career, I have investigated many of the UK’s worst disasters. Few cases were as harrowing as the sinking of the Marchioness in 1989, which left scores dead and almost impossible to identify
Doctors removed one-sixth of this boy’s brain — and what was left did something incredible
Proof of life: what evidence would it take to convince you that alien intelligence had been found?
Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer searches museum jars for genetic traces of flu, measles and other viruses. Their evolutionary stories can help treat modern outbreaks and prepare for future ones.