Several labs have reported the formation of bacterial nanotubes under different, often contrasting conditions. What are these structures and why are they so hard to reproduce?

Bats harbor diverse pathogens, including Ebola, Marburg, SARS, and MERS viruses. Understanding why could help researchers stymie deadly emerging diseases.

Plants communicate and interact with each other, both aboveground and below, in surprisingly subtle and sophisticated ways.

Erica P. JohnsonApreschool girl with black braids presses a finger to a disk that twists a brightly lit DNA model, transforming its ladder shape into a double helix. Her head bops from side to side in wonder as the towering DNA coils and straightens. When a bigger boy claims her place, the girl joins meandering moms and dads with their charges as they twist knobs, open flaps, and simply stare at flashing helixes and orange information boards: all a part of the museum exhibit called "Genome: The

Verbatim excerpts from the media on the conduct of science. A Word From the Frost Fighters ... Those protesting the test of a frost-fighting substance in a Brentwood strawberry patch have sat through too many showings of "Attack of the Giant Tomatoes." Protesters have gone to great lengths to make the field test of genetically altered bacteria into a science fiction soap opera in which men in white coats from Advanced Genetic Sciences, an Oakland-based biotechnology firm, are the mad-scientist