Yet modern biology has revealed that cells are preternaturally sophisticated assemblages — literally automated, miniaturized factories. How could the evidence have been overwhelming but now orthodoxy ...

Assembly Theory is a way to understand how the complexity of life emerged through a mechanism of “self-assembly.” It could explain how life formed on Earth—or other planets—via the shortest path to ...

For a long time, evolutionary biologists have thought that the genetic mutations that drive the evolution of genes and proteins are largely neutral: they're neither good nor bad, but just ordinary ...

For more than half a century, many biologists have leaned on the neutral theory of molecular evolution to explain how DNA and proteins change over time. The idea grew from early work in the 1960s, ...

The story of how us humans—and other mammals—got our noses may have just gotten more complicated. This is the conclusion of a new study by researchers from Japan who have studied how the face develops ...

Bill Bateman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

In 1943, a physicist and a biologist published a paper that confirmed one of the central pillars of Darwin's theory of evolution. The paper, by Max Delbrück of Vanderbilt University and Salvador Luria ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Humanity’s understanding of life was forever altered when ...

A random mutation in a gene can alter its function and bring about a new characteristic that can pass down for many generations, but this may not be the only way that organisms can inherit a trait.