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Microbes

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How a Biofilm’s Strange Shape Emerges From Cellular Geometry

April 21, 2025

Micro decisions can have macro consequences. A soft matter physicist reveals how interactions within simple cellular collectives can lead to emergent physical traits.

Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life

January 2, 2025

Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab.

Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too?

December 2, 2024

The discovery that other vertebrates have healthy, microbial brains is fueling the still controversial possibility that we might have them as well.

All Life on Earth Today Descended From a Single Cell. Meet LUCA.

November 20, 2024

The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago, a time long considered too harsh for life to flourish.

Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA

September 16, 2024

Cells across the tree of life can swap short-lived messages encoded by RNA — missives that resemble a quick text rather than a formal memo on letterhead.

The Physics of Cold Water May Have Jump-Started Complex Life

July 24, 2024

When seawater gets cold, it gets viscous. This fact could explain how single-celled ocean creatures became multicellular when the planet was frozen during “Snowball Earth,” according to experiments.

Tight-Knit Microbes Live Together to Make a Vital Nutrient

July 17, 2024

At sea, biologists discovered microbial partners that together produce nitrogen, a nutrient essential for life. The pair are in the process of merging into a single organism.

What Does Milk Do for Babies?

April 25, 2024

Human nutrition begins with milk, but the wondrous biofluid does much more than feed babies. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with molecular nutritionist Elizabeth Johnson about her research into the impact of human milk on a healthy microbiome.

The Quest for Simple Rules to Build a Microbial Community

January 17, 2024

Microbiologists are searching for a universal theory of how bacteria form communities based not on their species but on the roles they play.

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