Carl Zimmer
Non-human animals and even bacteria are prone to spread misinformation
[In 2025], the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued a warning about the dangers of misinformation. Social media platforms are ...
Viewpoint: ‘Organoid intelligence’?—Ethical questions arise in using organoid human brain nuggets to study disease
As months turned to years, Dr. Arlotta’s team set a record for the oldest documented brain organoids. “We never thought ...
Saving life from extinction: Why it’s critical to protect and preserve bacteria and other microbes
Hundreds of scientists have joined together to save a group of species from extinction, a group that might not seem ...
COVID wet market nature origin theory gets a boost: The genetic trail of coronavirus origins
In a study published on [May 7, 2025], a team of researchers compared the evolutionary story of SARS with that of Covid 17 ...
What are apes trying to communicate when they use gestures. Is there an evolutionary link to humans?
Apes, [...] do not inherit specific gestures, but they do inherit the sense that they can use gestures to communicate ...
Is there an evolutionary explanation for human’s love of music?
In a new study, researchers found universal features of songs across many cultures, suggesting that music evolved in our distant ...
What is the meaning of life? Artificial intelligence is trying to find out
It took humans 134 years to discover Norn cells. Last summer, computers in California discovered them on their own in ...
Does same-sex bonding in animals provide insight into sexual orientation in humans?
Apes branched off from other primates about 25 million years ago and evolved a much higher rate of same-sex sexual ...
COVID research transparency: Lab loopholes can lead to unnecessarily risky experiments. What can be done?
Scientists at Boston University came under fire this week for an experiment in which they tinkered with the Covid virus ...
10 years old: CRISPR is revolutionizing medicine and agriculture, raising profound ethical questions
Ten years ago this week, Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues published the results of a test-tube experiment on bacterial genes ...
Omicron is dominating Delta, but future variants will most likely overtake them both
“Omicron is likely to push Delta out,” said Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, ...
What can we expect from two about-to-be-introduced COVID treatment pills?
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to soon authorize a pill made by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, called molnupiravir, ...
Why don’t humans have tails like other hominids? It could be an accident of evolutionary history
For half a billion years or so, our ancestors sprouted tails. As fish, they used their tails to swim through ...
NDV-HXP-S ‘game changer’: A new low-cost vaccine made in chicken eggs now in clinical trials could change the way we fight COVID
[A new] vaccine, called NDV-HXP-S, is the first in clinical trials to use a new molecular design that is widely ...
COVID variant warning: Brazil P.1 variant infects many who had recovered, devastating Manaus
B.1.1.7, first identified in Britain, has demonstrated the power to spread far and fast. In South Africa, a mutant called ...
UK COVID variant now spreading across the US likely deadlier than original virus
[British scientists recently said] that there was a “realistic possibility” that the variant was not only more contagious than others, ...
Evolution and the pandemic: How COVID could develop resistance to vaccines over time
With the emergence of what seem so far to be safe and effective vaccine candidates, it appears that humanity may be ...
COVID-19 vaccine tracker: What’s the status of all vaccines in development?
Vaccines typically require years of research and testing before reaching the clinic, but in 2020, scientists embarked on a race ...
‘Editing Humanity’: Kevin Davies’ new book on CRISPR, the ‘miracle of our age’
“The Crispr story has arrived for the grand telling as a miracle of our age,” the [MIT Technology Review announced ...
COVID vaccines for children need to be vetted more carefully and may not be ready for a full year
Thanks to the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed and other programs, a number of Covid-19 vaccines for adults are already in advanced ...
What if the first COVID vaccines are rushed, not guaranteed to be safe, and limited in effectiveness?
[A] surprising number of research groups are placing bets on some [COVID-19 vaccines] that have not yet been given to ...
Who are COVID-19 ‘super spreaders’ and how do they transmit the virus so widely
Growing evidence shows most infected people aren’t spreading the virus. But whether you become a superspreader probably depends more on ...
Intriguing links between blood types and COVID-19 outcomes
Why do some people infected with the coronavirus suffer only mild symptoms, while others become deathly ill? Geneticists have been ...
New York’s coronavirus outbreak traced to travelers who arrived from Europe in February before travel ban was imposed
New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first ...
What is it about the coronavirus genome that makes it so dangerous?
In January, scientists deciphered a piece of very bad news: the genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The ...
Bizarre deep sea microbe could help explain origins of ‘animals, plants, fungi and humans’
Two billion years ago, simple cells gave rise to far more complex cells. Biologists have struggled for decades to learn ...
Scientists reconstruct yet-to-be-found skull of humans’ last common ancestor entirely through computer imaging
[R]esearchers like Dr. [Aurélien] Mounier are using computers and mathematical techniques to reconstruct the appearance of fossils they have yet ...
Podcast: Why did we survive, when the Denisovans and Neanderthals did not?
The Denisovans have long been one of the most elusive ancient human cousins, until now. In May 2019, scientists revealed ...
