Genetic engineering pioneer Kevin Esvelt’s work highlights biotechnology’s immense potential for good—but also for catastrophe.

With the help of directed evolution, scientists inch closer to developing viral vectors that can cross the human blood-brain barrier to deliver gene therapy.

Biofilms are home to millions of microbes, but disrupting their interactions could produce more effective antibiotics.

Jumping genes in bdelloid rotifers are tamped down by DNA methylation performed by an enzyme pilfered from bacteria roughly 60 million years ago, a study finds.

Scientists have genetically modified isolated microbes for decades. Now, using CRISPR, they intend to target entire microbiomes.

Jeffrey Palmer, an associate professor of biology at Indiana University, Bloomington, has been awarded the David Starr Jordan Prize in biology for his contributions to molecular plant evolutionary biology. The international prize, given jointly every three years by Stanford University, Calif.; Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; and Indiana University, is named after a late 19th- and early 20th-century evolutionary scientist, educator, and university president with ties to the three institutions.

Despite recent advances in the study of eukaryogenesis, much remains unresolved about the origin and evolution of the most complex domain of life.

A device dubbed the “mother machine” enables real-time observation of mutagenesis in single bacterial cells.  

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?