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How Will We Know We’re Not Alone?
...just part of the process of evolution of a planet? KALTENEGGER: That’s a great question, and that’s exactly how I started my career in this field, actually. I wanted to...
Why Are Rivers So Mathematical?
...every place to a single place (the sea, a heart, a city center). Of the various examples, rivers are especially revealing, I think, since they arise from neither biological evolution...
How Do Fungi Keep the Planet Healthy?
Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers explains how fungal networks in soil trade nutrients with plants, help keep carbon underground, and strike bargains without having a brain. People may think of soil...
Did Life Begin in an RNA World?
...such mutations, Darwinian evolution becomes possible: Natural selection would favor mutant replicators that make copies at a faster rate. These primitive, evolving molecular systems wouldn’t be “alive” in themselves. It’s...
The Case for a Bubble at Life’s Start
...containers. But many proponents of the lipid world go even further. They argue that the bubbles did more than hold chemistry. The bubbles themselves began to evolve. Evolution requires a...
Oxygen and Stem Cells May Have Reshaped Early Complex Animals
...rapid proliferation and diversification of animal life that, half a billion years ago, forever changed Earth’s evolutionary landscape. In spite of Påhlman’s initial reservations, however, the pair has collaborated over...
Chronological Clues to Life’s Early History Lurk in Gene Transfers
https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12211 To date the branches on the evolutionary tree of life, researchers are looking at horizontal gene transfers among ancient microorganisms, which once seemed only to muddle the record. Scientists...
Why Nature Prefers Couples, Even for Yeast
...think about two biological sexes: male and female. But before the evolution of eggs and sperm — before sex cells began to diverge in size and form — organisms couldn’t...
Artificial Intelligence Finds Ancient ‘Ghosts’ in Modern DNA
...not only for identifying unforeseen ghosts but also for uncovering the very faded footprints of the evolutionary processes that have shaped who we’ve become. The Search for Subtle Signatures Current...