Cell Matters

The key to averting cataclysmic events, such as pandemics, climate change, and mass extinction of species, lies partly in what’s on our plates.

For too long, some scientists have acted like Gollums of the ivory tower, guarding precious study sites, model organisms, and even entire fields of inquiry.

The broken-wing display, in which birds fake being wounded to protect their nests from predators, is found across the avian phylogenetic tree, a study finds.

A survey of more than 200 whale skulls has unveiled bursts of evolution over the past 50 million years.

A decade-long, multicontinent study suggests that acoustic defense strategies are more common among moths than previously imagined.

Researchers race to find ecological data kept on outdated media or in dusty backroom boxes—before they’re lost forever.

The MIT biologist studies how RNA molecules self-assemble and the role these accumulations may play in diseases such as ALS and Huntington’s.

The Duke University cell biologist uses live-cell microscopy to reveal how brain cells rid themselves of damaged mitochondria and what goes wrong in neurodegenerative disease.

When species disappear, more than their genomes are lost. The potential for their creative innovation to benefit ecosystems vanishes as well.

In Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, I explore what it is that makes an animal a pest—and it has nothing to do with their behavior, but rather our own desires and beliefs about the natural world.

Pioneering nurse Florence Nightingale had an eye for creating memorable graphics that helped convince the general population that including sanitation reforms as part of public health policy would save British soldiers’ lives.

German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld founded a revolutionary clinic where transgender people could receive gender-affirming care, but he left behind a complicated medical and scientific legacy.