Biology

Take chemistry, add energy, get life. The first tests of Jeremy England’s provocative origin-of-life hypothesis are in, and they appear to show how order can arise from nothing.

Hydrodynamics and competition guide the architectural design of biofilm fortresses.

Mathematical insights into how RNA helps viruses pull together their protein shells could guide future studies of viral behavior and function.

Sex might help natural selection purge excessive mistakes from our genes.

New techniques expose unexpected diversity within seemingly uniform tissues.

Asexual reproduction can produce twice as many offspring as sexual reproduction without the hassle of finding and courting a mate. So why do most complex animals have two sexes? Why not three?

The evolutionary biologist Jessica Flack seeks the computational rules that groups of organisms use to solve problems.

If gut bacteria can sway their hosts to be selfless, it could answer a riddle that goes back to Darwin.

An unexpected mechanism allows wasps to rapidly co-opt genes for new toxic functions.