Computational biology

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

Technology has forever served as science’s toolbox. But now that AI is being used to develop questions and methods as well, some scientists wonder what their role is going to become.

Physicists and marine biologists built a quantitative framework that predicts how coral polyps collectively construct a variety of coral shapes.

Three years ago, Google’s AlphaFold pulled off the biggest artificial intelligence breakthrough in science to date, accelerating molecular research and kindling deep questions about why we do science.

A 3D digital model of a “minimal cell” leads scientists closer to understanding the barest requirements for life.

The computational biologist Anne Carpenter creates software that brings the power of machine learning to researchers seeking answers in mountains of cell images.

Modeling suggests that many embryonic cells commit to a developmental fate when they become too small to divide unevenly anymore.

Paradoxically, the abundance of tight interactions among living species usually leads to disasters in ecological models. New analyses hint at how nature seemingly defies the math.

For the first time, researchers have traced the genetic programs that guide the development of each cell in early embryos. Surprisingly, even cells that start out different can end up the same.