Viruses

The discovery that viruses move between species unexpectedly often is rewriting ideas about their evolutionary history — and may have troubling implications for the threat from emerging diseases.

Mathematical insights into how RNA helps viruses pull together their protein shells could guide future studies of viral behavior and function.

Examine evolution over the course of years or centuries, and you’ll find that it progresses much more quickly than it does over geologic time.

Without viruses, we might never have evolved.

A virus that causes crippling birth defects has been shown to do something else: It changes thousands of messages coming from DNA that control normal cellular activities.

Scientists are having a difficult time finding a treatment for the Zika virus in part because so few drugs are safe for pregnant women. But one antibiotic has shown promise.

Researchers are racing to understand how the Zika virus causes birth defects. Their first results have revealed tantalizing clues about how the virus interferes with the developing brain — and how it might be stopped.

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

In the few decades since viruses were first found in the oceans, scientists have only been able to identify a handful of species. A new survey has uncovered nearly all the rest.