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Researchers are building a case that long before the nervous system works, the brain sends crucial bioelectric signals to guide the growth of embryonic tissues.
With electrical signals, simple cells organize themselves into complex societies and negotiate with other colonies.
Take chemistry, add energy, get life. The first tests of Jeremy England’s provocative origin-of-life hypothesis are in, and they appear to show how order can arise from nothing.
The new experiments suggest that simple models can explain the behavior of thousands of interacting organisms.
Life was long thought to obey its own set of rules. But as simple systems show signs of lifelike behavior, scientists are arguing about whether this apparent complexity is all a consequence of thermodynamics.
Life might have originated in droplets that behave surprisingly like living cells.
Researchers have discovered that simple “chemically active” droplets grow to the size of cells and spontaneously divide, suggesting they might have evolved into the first living cells.
Researchers have used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to manipulate the way that DNA coils up inside the cell — another step in the quest to understand how the genome’s 3-D structure impacts its function.
The subtle mechanics of densely packed cells may help explain why some cancerous tumors stay put while others break off and spread through the body.