Latest Articles
New Insights Into How Zika Harms the Brain
Researchers are racing to understand how the Zika virus causes birth defects. Their first results have revealed tantalizing clues about how the virus interferes with the developing brain — and how it might be stopped.
A Secret Flexibility Found in Life’s Blueprints
A new study reveals that individual genes can create many different versions of the molecular machinery that powers the cell.
A Timely Fix for a Grand Theory of Nature
A disarmingly simple model of ecology does everything well — except predict how rapidly nature can change. Can it become more realistic while still avoiding all of biology’s messy complexities?
The Woman Who Stared at Wasps
The biologist Joan Strassmann discusses cooperation in social insects, how amoebas can teach us about competition, and why the definition of “organism” needs an overhaul.
Networks Untangle Malaria’s Deadly Shuffle
By examining regions shared between some of nature’s most variable genes, malaria researchers are piecing together an understanding of a deadly parasite.
How the Body’s Trillions of Clocks Keep Time
Cellular clocks are almost everywhere. Clues to how they work are coming from the places they’re not.
Networks Reveal the Connections of Disease
Disease is the result of failure somewhere along the line in a complex dance of biological components. Now statistical physicists are using enormous databases of medical records to study connections between illnesses.
The Thermodynamic Theory of Ecology
Nature’s large-scale patterns emerge from incomplete surveys that borrow ideas from information theory.