biology

Online comment platforms can bring out the best — and the worst — in people. At the end of a tumultuous year, Quanta’s editors highlight some of our favorite things you had to say.

While the study of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the most urgent priority, biologists also learned more about how brains process information, how to define individuality and why sleep deprivation kills.

Mistletoes have all but shut down the powerhouses of their cells. Scientists are still trying to understand the plants’ unorthodox survival strategy.

Catherine Dulac is overturning preconceptions about “male” and “female” instincts and opening new avenues to treating postpartum depression.

The simple insight that most changes are random had a profound effect on genetics, evolution and ecology.

In three bursts of adaptive change, one species of cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika gave rise to hundreds.

An unorthodox symbiotic theory about the origin of eukaryotes’ defining characteristic may soon be put to the test.

Has physics reached the limits of what we can discover — or are the possibilities only just beginning?

Even genes essential for life can be caught in an evolutionary arms race that forces them to change or be replaced.