Genomics

The rainbow of pigments that animals use for blood illustrates a central truth of evolution.

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.

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.

Neither animal, plant, fungus nor familiar protozoan, a strange microbe that sits in its own “supra-kingdom” of life foretells incredible biodiversity yet to be discovered by new sequencing technologies.

For 50 years, evolutionary theory has emphasized the importance of neutral mutations rather than adaptive ones at the level of DNA. Real genomic data challenges that assumption.

A newly discovered mechanism may enable viruses to shuttle genes between bacteria 1,000 times as often as was thought — making them a major force in those cells’ evolution.