Evolution

Researchers are beginning to understand the ways in which viruses strategically manipulate and cooperate with one another.

New studies revise ideas about the symbiosis that gave mitochondria to cells and about whether the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes was one cell or many.

Researchers hope that the genes of a glowing squid can illuminate how animals evolved organs for beneficial bacteria.

With the help of deep learning techniques, paleoanthropologists find evidence of long-lost branches on the human family tree.

If highly repetitive gene-regulating sequences in DNA are easily lost, that may explain why some adaptations evolve quickly and repeatedly.

Biologists have demonstrated for the first time that a controversial genetic engineering technology works, with caveats, in mammals.

Jellyfish didn’t need novel genes to take an evolutionary leap in complexity.

Some researchers are using a complexity framework thought to be purely theoretical to understand evolutionary dynamics in biological and computational systems.

On November 16, 2018, more than 200 readers joined writers and editors from Quanta Magazine for a wide-ranging panel discussion that examined the newest ideas in fundamental physics, biology and mathematics research.