These birds spend long periods, often asleep, standing on one leg. Is it passive biomechanics or active nervous system control of their muscles that allows them to do easily what’s impossible for us?
Researchers are starting to harness the potential of this much-hyped gene editing technique – with coming applications in medicine, biology and agriculture.
Bio-prospecting is the search for useful materials from natural sources. A biologist explains what we can learn from bacteria about breaking down plant material, and how we can use that knowledge.
Scientists invented chemical weapons; some are now working to destroy them. New biomolecular design techniques let researchers design proteins that can destroy nerve agents in bodies.
Taking the placenta as a case study, researchers are able to piece together how new organs evolve, by repurposing old tissues and using them to do new jobs.
How can the same basic genome produce such different forms in the two sexes of a single species? It turns out one gene can encode for various things, depending on the order its instructions are read.
In 1997, scientists announced they’d created a healthy sheep cloned from another ewe’s mammary gland cell. Two decades on, the technique is being refined and applied to new challenges.
Archer Larned, University of Maryland, Baltimore County et Sarah Luttrell, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
During bird irruptions, hundreds or thousands of a single species show up outside their normal territory. Most of what we know about irruptions comes from data collected by citizen scientists.
Victorian attitudes influenced what scientists thought they were observing about sexual behaviors in the animal world. But modern techniques reveal the myth for what it is.
When art meets the biological sciences, living matter becomes the medium. From the chaotic beauty of smallpox to poems implanted in bacteria, Bio-art investigates the boundaries of life and death.
A new exhibition at MONA, curated by scientists, explores the biological and evolutionary origins of art. The show is spectacular - but it offers an overwhelmingly male perspective.
Humans can more easily tolerate tumours in large or paired organs than in small, critical ones. This could be why the latter have evolved more cancer-fighting mechanisms.