Quanta
Individuality might be a measureable genetic trait
Benjamin de Bivort's lab at Harvard University is Groundhog Day for fruit flies. In de Bivort’s version, a fly must choose to ...
How a small stretch of DNA can keep species separate — even when they interbreed
Sometimes, two distinct species interbreed, even though they're technically not supposed to. But what stops these rare cases of hybridization ...
What is a ‘species,’ exactly?
Most people do not get to use the tree-climbing skills they perfected as children once they’re adults. But for Jochen Wolf, ...
Does competition drive diversity of species?
In Darwinian evolution, organisms compete for resources, and the winners get to pass their genome to future generations. According to ...
Under pressure, even evolution evolves
Although Darwin’s ideas have clearly triumphed in modern biology, hints of a more Lamarckian style of inheritance have continued to ...
Repeated patterns in DNA may be missing piece of the story of human evolution
Science is just starting to unlock what we can learn from duplicated regions of DNA in the genes of humans ...
RNA plays role in cellular communication
For decades, researchers have been finding DNA and its sister, RNA, circulating in the body, outside the safe interior of ...
Evolution as opportunist
Evolution is littered with examples of opportunism. Hosts infected by viruses found new uses for the genetic material the agents ...
The surprising origins of life’s complexity
Conventional wisdom holds that complex structures evolve from simpler ones, step-by-step, through a gradual evolutionary process, with Darwinian selection favoring ...
