A love of big questions led Paul Turner to investigate why simple species have sex, with surprising results. Hint: viruses, too, are faced with a prisoner's dilemma.

NIH's Gisela Storz has spent her career drilling down to the core of questions such as how bacteria respond to oxidants - work that has taken her in some unexpected directions.

Ed Liu has produced innovative translational research and a world-class genome institute using his undeniable intellect - and charm.

Marc Kirschner likes to expose biology's essential processes, such as how a simple microtubule can form such a variety of structures. Lucky for biology.

Elaine Ostrander was a cell biologist at the top of her game. Then she discovered her true passion, and really took off running.

Lynn Cooley figured she'd study sea creatures, then decided to revolutionize genetics instead.

Sean Eddy used his decades' experience playing video games to design software that found an entire new class of genes. And he's still looking.

James Collins has shifted gears from medical engineering to gene switches, and won a MacArthur grant along the way.

Christine Jacobs-Wagner's studies of a bacterial species have changed how scientists think about cell shape and polarity.

High school dropout Peter Kwong has solved the structures of some of nature's toughest proteins.

By Karen Hopkin © Richard Corbett Born and raised in the English countryside, where he collected birds' eggs and cared for pet hedgehogs, Michael Ashburner set out to study zoology at the University of Cambridge. It was 1963, and the policy at Cambridge was that undergraduates would specialize in their third year, taking a single focused course call

Danny Reinberg has broken down everything from transcription factors to chromatin. Then he builds them back up, and the discoveries come.