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The Ocean Teems With Networks of Interconnected Bacteria

January 6, 2025

Nanotube bridge networks grow between the most abundant photosynthetic bacteria in the oceans, suggesting that the world is far more interconnected than anyone realized.

Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life

January 2, 2025

Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab.

The Year in Biology

December 18, 2024

Biologists used artificial intelligence to make discoveries about molecules and the brain, and overturned long-held assumptions about the immune system and RNA.

How Is Cell Death Essential to Life?

December 5, 2024

Cells in our bodies are constantly dying — and these countless tiny deaths are essential to human health and multicellular life itself. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with cellular biologist Shai Shaham about what makes a cell “alive” and the latest developments in understanding how and why cells die.

A salmon depicted with a microbiome in its brain

Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too?

The discovery that other vertebrates have healthy, microbial brains is fueling the still controversial possibility that we might have them as well.

What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language?

November 21, 2024

We often consider spoken language to be a feature that distinguishes humans from other forms of animal life. Brain research, however, suggests that other creatures — including certain birds — share some of our neural circuitry related to language. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin explores the origins and underlying mechanisms of human speech and birdsong with neurobiologist and geneticist Erich Jarvis.

All Life on Earth Today Descended From a Single Cell. Meet LUCA.

November 20, 2024

The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago, a time long considered too harsh for life to flourish.

Q&A

He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It

November 4, 2024

Yizhi “Patrick” Cai is coordinating a global effort to write a complete synthetic yeast genome. If he succeeds, the resulting cell will be the artificial life most closely related to humans to date.

Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized

October 28, 2024

All modern multicellular life — all life that any of us regularly see — is made of cells with a knack for compartmentalization. Recent discoveries are revealing how the first eukaryote got its start.

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