Biology

New work suggests that the radiolytic splitting of water supports giant subsurface ecosystems of life on Earth — and could do it elsewhere, too.

Studies of sleep are usually neurological. But some of nature’s simplest animals suggest that sleep evolved for metabolic reasons, long before brains even existed.

Eve Marder’s research into the plasticity and resilience of nervous systems finds universal principles guiding life’s responses to stress.

Advances in brain-computer interface technology are impressive, but we’re not close to anything resembling mind control.

Transcription factors that act throughout the genome can arise from mashups of transposable elements inserted into established genes.

New work shows that histones, long treated as boring spools for DNA, sit at the center of the origin story of eukaryotes and continue to play important roles in evolution and disease.

Glycans, the complex sugars that stud cellular surfaces, are like a language that life uses to mediate vital interactions. Researchers are learning how to read their meaning.

A newfound hub of immune system activity at the back of the brain solves a century-old puzzle.

Anesthesia is very different from sleep — which is why it offers unique opportunities for studying the human brain, says the physician-researcher and statistician Emery Brown.