The tiny pantheon known as the Asgard archaea bear traits that hint at how plants, animals and fungi emerged on Earth.

A growing number of new studies have found that, at least for some cells, death isn’t the end, but the beginning of something ...

Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. But the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state” that lies beyond the traditional ...

Understanding the human cell is vital to progress in the life sciences and to human health. Cells are the smallest, most basic unit of life responsible for all of life’s processes. A typical human ...

Billions of years of evolution have made modern cells incredibly complex. Inside cells are small compartments called organelles that perform specific functions essential for the cell’s survival and ...

The chemical reactions on which life depends need a place to happen. That place is the cell. All the things which biology recognises as indisputably alive are either cells or conglomerations of cells ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For a molecule of RNA, the world is a dangerous place. Unlike DNA, which can persist for millions of years in its remarkably stable, ...

Research on so-called mirror cells, which defy fundamental properties of living organisms, should be prohibited as too dangerous, biologists said. By Carl Zimmer On Thursday, 38 prominent biologists ...

I always wanted to understand life. What moves us? What allows us to heal and thrive? And what goes wrong when we get sick or when we eventually stop breathing and die? My search for answers to these ...