Genetics

An insight borrowed from computer science suggests that evolution values both fitness and diversity.

By comparing the genomes of social and solitary bees, scientists hope to uncover the basis for communal behavior.

Some organisms respond to stress by driving up their mutation rate. Are they evolving specific mechanisms to enhance evolution in times of crisis?

Mysterious episodes of genetic duplication in our great ape ancestors may have paved the way for human evolution.

Analyzing individual cancer cells could reveal the answer to some of the disease’s most enduring mysteries.

New technologies have launched the life sciences into the age of big data. Biologists must now make sense of their windfall.

Symbiotic bacteria that dwell within insect cells are intricately intertwined with their hosts, prompting scientists to question when these bacteria stop being bona fide organisms and become part of the cell.

More genetic data is available than ever before to help build evolutionary trees, but scientists are finding that different genes even in the same organism can tell conflicting stories.