Life’s story may stretch further back than scientists once thought. Some genes found in nearly every organism today were already duplicated before all life shared a common ancestor. By tracking these ...

J ohn Moult remembers the time he was floored by an algorithm. Moult, one of the organizers of the Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) competitions and a computational biologist ...

As 2025 comes to a close, the editors at The Scientist asked researchers to reflect on the biggest breakthroughs in cell biology this year. They named advances in everything from embryo models for ...

For many years, like most of my peers, I thought that science was part of the solution. More knowledge and innovation would ...

In a significant breakthrough, scientists at Maynooth University in Ireland have developed a new test that successfully recovers fingerprints from spent bullet casings. This achievement, often ...

Humans can genetically modify plants and animals to be more resilient to climate change and disease. But the scientific community is divided about whether the tool should be put to use in nature.

One of my closest friends is a neuroscientist, investigating how brain cells develop and how they search for and choose other brain cells to connect with. Her research can sound intimidating, but when ...