A flurry of new studies is shedding light on one of the biggest steps in the history of life: the evolution two billion years ago of complex cells from simpler ones. In the oceans and on land, scientists are discovering rare, transitional microbes that bridge the gap.

The differences between complex cells, including those in the human body, and simple microbes such as E. coli are stark. Complex cells are packed with compartments; one, known as the nucleus, stores DNA; others, called mitochondria, contain enzymes that generate the cell’s fuel supply. Complex cells are also supported internally by a mesh of filaments, that they use to crawl by breaking down parts of it and building new extensions.

Continue reading “How Microbes Got Their Crawl” →

In 2024, two scientists from Google DeepMind shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for an artificial-intelligence program called AlphaFold2.

For decades, scientists had struggled to understand how strings of molecular building blocks fold into the complex, three-dimensional structures of proteins. Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and their colleagues at Google DeepMind trained a program to predict the shapes; when AlphaFold2 was introduced in 2020, it performed so well at this task that scientists around the world adopted it.

Continue reading “Researchers Are Using A.I. to Decode the Human Genome” →

Brenna Henn: In my lab, we’re interested in characterizing human diversity, especially from populations that live in Africa or are descendants from Africa. One thing we wanted to address is the huge focus on personalized genetic medicine. The idea is that you get your genome sequenced, and then for heart disease or tuberculosis — pick your favorite disease — we’ll be able to give you a score of how likely you’ll be to develop these things.

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If you live in the United States, chances are you’re familiar with the game rock-paper-scissors. You put out your hand in one of three gestures: clenching it in a fist (rock), holding it out flat (paper) or holding up two fingers in a “V” (scissors). Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper and paper beats rock.

Americans by no means have a monopoly on the game. People play it around the world in many variations, and under many names. In Japan, where the game has existed for thousands of years, it’s known as janken. In Indonesia, it’s known as earwig-man-elephant: The elephant kills the man, the man kills the earwig and the earwig crawls up through the elephant’s trunk and eats its brain.

Continue reading “This Diminutive Reptile Plays Rock-Paper-Scissors” →