Evolution

Gene drives promise to spread a trait across an entire population. But evolutionary forces are going to alter even the best-engineered plans.

When life first emerged roughly 4 billion years ago, DNA may have been a much more malleable molecule.

Scientists are exploring a mysterious pattern, found in birds’ eyes, boxes of marbles and other surprising places, that is neither regular nor random.

A newly discovered anole on the island of Hispaniola confirms that the buildup of ecological communities can follow predictable patterns.

How interbreeding among early hominins harmed humans but may have slowed the Neanderthals’ decline.

Neanderthals and Denisovans may have endowed modern humans with genetic variants that helped them thrive in new environments.

A specific set of neurons deep in the brain may motivate us to seek company, holding social species together.

The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman believes that evolution and quantum mechanics conspire to make objective reality an illusion.

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.