Carl Zimmer

DNA evidence says some tiny water fleas hatched from eggs at the bottom of a Minnesota lake, are 700 years ...

It’s hard to believe that Escherichia coli could have any secrets left. For over a century, scientists have picked the ...

According to new research, expansion of the brain in our ancestors ripped apart tethered neurons, enabling new circuits to be ...

The title of my blog post is provocative, I know, but I’m actually just lifting it from the title of ...

A single Neanderthal toe bone has provided scientists with the most complete genome to date, offering a new glimpse into ...

A new report has found that nearly a third of Laysan albatross pairs on Oahu are of the same gender, ...

Researchers found senescent cells--normally associated with old and damaged tissue--in embryos. Now, they suspect senescence plays a role in differentiating ...

Biologists at Michigan State University have frozen 50,000 generations of E. coli over the past 25 years to demonstrate Darwin’s ...

Long ago, part of one virus's genome merged with the human genome. Now it's in each of us, helping to ...

Not all genetic mutations are harmful. New research shows that mutations within neurons may be incredibly common, and even sometimes ...

We've been tweaking and tinkering with DNA for thousands of years, but we're just reaching a time when humans, more ...

Five decades after cracking the genetic code, scientists have discovered how to re-code DNA cells and build new proteins. The ...

Brigham and Women’s Hospital's Robert Green wants to know how having your complete genome sequenced at birth changes the course ...

Researchers study the genetics of an emerging respiratory virus to see if has the potential to become a widespread scourge ...

A single body, a single genome: that's the rule. Or it was. Researchers are finding that many perfectly healthy individuals ...

In August 2013, in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, Gordon Bennett and Nancy Moran describe a new record holder, called Nasuia deltocephalinicola. It ...

Rarely does a whole life’s work crumble in a single week, but James Wilson’s did. Wilson and his colleagues were ...

Scientists hope to use genomic knowledge to grow better trees that can yield more oil and reduce pressure on the ...

Conventional wisdom holds that complex structures evolve from simpler ones, step-by-step, through a gradual evolutionary process, with Darwinian selection favoring ...

Depending on your point of view, barnyardgrass is a nightmare or a marvel. That’s because it’s a supremely triumphant weed ...

Researchers find that a bacteria's tiny genome size is made possible only because its host's genetic code does some of ...

How do we separate the signal from the noise in our "junk"-filled genomes? ...

The following is an edited excerpt of a longer story. In today’s New York Times, the actress Angelina Jolie published a remarkably ...

The following is an excerpt of a longer story. In the mid-2000s, David Markovitz, a scientist at the University of ...

Everyone who lived a thousand years ago who has any descendants today is an ancestor of every European ...

Scientists have begun to tease apart the interactions between evolution, genetics, disease, and pregnancy ...

The following is an excerpt. One day in July 1958, François Jacob squirmed in a Paris movie theater. His wife, ...

The following is an edited excerpt. For the cover story in the April 2013 issue of National Geographic, I explore an ...