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Biology

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Evolution: Fast or Slow? Lizards Help Resolve a Paradox.

January 2, 2024

Why does natural selection appear to happen slowly on long timescales and quickly on short ones? A multigenerational study of four lizard species addresses biology’s “paradox of stasis.”

The Year in Biology

December 19, 2023

In a year packed with fascinating discoveries, biologists pushed the limits of synthetic life, probed how organisms keep time, and refined theories about consciousness and emotional health.

How This Marine Worm Can Tell Moonglow From Sunbeams

December 19, 2023

For the first time, scientists have decoded the molecular structure of a protein that helps to sync a biological clock to the phases of the moon.

New Cell Atlases Reveal Untold Variety in the Brain and Beyond

December 13, 2023

Recent efforts to map every cell in the human body have researchers floored by unfathomable diversity, with many thousands of subtly different types of cells in the human brain alone.

Q&A

She Studies How Addiction Hijacks Learning in the Brain

December 7, 2023

Erin Calipari works to understand how drugs like opioids and cocaine alter learning circuits and neurochemistry in one of the country's epicenters of substance use disorder and addiction.

The New Quest to Control Evolution

November 29, 2023

Modern scientists aren’t content with predicting how life evolves. They want to shape it.

Evolving Bacteria Can Evade Barriers to ‘Peak’ Fitness

November 28, 2023

Paradoxically, natural selection can sometimes seem to block organisms from evolving useful adaptations. But a new study of “fitness landscapes” and antibiotic resistance in bacteria shows that life still finds a way.

In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge

November 21, 2023

Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play key roles in digestion and disease that scientists are only just starting to understand.

During Pregnancy, a Fake ‘Infection’ Protects the Fetus

November 14, 2023

Cells in the placenta have an unusual trick for activating gentle immune defenses and keeping them turned on when no infection is present. It involves crafting and deploying a fake virus.

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