Bacteria

The bacterial flagellar motor is finally understood after 50 years. In its workings, columnist Natalie Wolchover finds the essence of life.

Dozens of new discoveries reveal that defenses evolved by bacteria and viruses billions of years ago still define our own innate immune system.

A collection of short dispatches from the field of climate microbiology conveys the contributions that single-celled life forms make to our climate system, and how we can work with them to address climate change.

In a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park, a microbe does something that life shouldn’t be able to do: It breathes oxygen and sulfur at the same time.

A better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that enter your nose and the individual neurons that translate them into perception in your brain.

By speedrunning ecosystems with microbes, researchers revealed intrinsic properties that may make a community susceptible to invasion.

Nanotube bridge networks grow between the most abundant photosynthetic bacteria in the oceans, suggesting that the world is far more interconnected than anyone realized.

The discovery that other vertebrates have healthy, microbial brains is fueling the still controversial possibility that we might have them as well.

The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago, a time long considered too harsh for life to flourish.