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Scientists have created a synthetic organism that possesses only the genes it needs to survive. But they have no idea what roughly a third of those genes do.
New insights from neuroscience — aided by a small zoo’s worth of dancing animals — are revealing the biological origins of rhythm.
The biologist David Deamer proposes that life evolved from a collection of interacting molecules, probably in a pool in the shadow of a volcano.
A disarmingly simple model of ecology does everything well — except predict how rapidly nature can change. Can it become more realistic while still avoiding all of biology’s messy complexities?
Perhaps chemistry played a more instrumental role in the origin of life than scientists thought.
Searching for signs of life on faraway planets, astrobiologists must decide which telltale biosignature gases to target.
Nature offers species a panoply of ways to determine an organism’s sex. That flexibility suggests we need not be concerned about losing sex chromosomes, but it raises the question of why such a fundamental property is so variable.
The polymath Christoph Adami is investigating life’s origins by reimagining life as self-perpetuating information strings.
Scientists have begun to identify the symphony of biological triggers that powered the extraordinary expansion of the human brain.