Biology

Extremophiles that thrive in the most unforgiving environments aren’t just biological curiosities. Understanding their resilience has many implications for us.

The biologist’s bold “energetic view of life” looks to the body’s strangest organelles as the link between cells, health, and mind and the foundation of our experience of being alive.

An invisible difference in 10% of humans poses deep mysteries in several fields at once.

The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly — complicates our understanding of what it means to be alive. But does it serve a scientific purpose?

Scientists built a synthetic cell that combines more lifelike properties than ever before — proof of concept that it’s possible to bring nonliving materials to life, or something close to it, in the lab.

The mechanical process of cell division exerts powerful, if microscopic, forces. How do the molecular machines that power it manage the strain?

Our genetic heritage is not a blueprint or an algorithm, as many biologists have imagined, but something else entirely.

In the first episode of the new season of ‘The Joy of Why,’ Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna discusses how she discovered CRISPR’s genome-editing power, the breakthroughs and hurdles during its explosive growth, and what lies ahead for this groundbreaking technology.

An ancient lineage of cyanobacteria is helping biologists uncover an early evolutionary stage of the mind-boggling process that turns light into life.