Biology

The biologist Nancy Moran has spent a career investigating the surprising nature of symbiosis, a phenomenon in which two species can appear to merge into one.

Cellular clocks are almost everywhere. Clues to how they work are coming from the places they’re not.

A new understanding of viral swarms is helping researchers predict how viruses will evolve and where disease is likely to spread.

Emerging data suggests the seemingly impossible — that mysterious new genes arise from “junk” DNA.

A new technique for finding and characterizing microbes has boosted the number of known bacteria by almost 50 percent, revealing a hidden world all around us.

Scientists hope that new genetic letters, created in the lab, will endow DNA with new powers.

The biologist Deborah Gordon has uncovered how ant colonies search efficiently without central organization, an insight that might improve computer networks.

By swapping ancient genes into modern E. coli, scientists hope to tease out the rules of evolution.

The soil teems with billions of hidden microbes. Researchers have begun to catalog how these organisms are changing the world.