John Rennie

New results emerging from graph theory prove that the way a population is organized can guarantee the eventual triumph of natural selection — or permanently thwart it.

James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing ways to unleash the immune system more effectively against cancers.

By using the power of evolution to solve practical problems, three researchers opened new avenues to chemical discovery.

Biologists have demonstrated for the first time that a controversial genetic engineering technology works, with caveats, in mammals.

The rainbow of pigments that animals use for blood illustrates a central truth of evolution.

The ingredients for reactions ancestral to metabolism could have formed very easily in the primordial soup, new work suggests.

While the study of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the most urgent priority, biologists also learned more about how brains process information, how to define individuality and why sleep deprivation kills.

The detailed understanding of brains and multicellular bodies reached new heights this year, while the genomes of the COVID-19 virus and various organisms yielded more surprises.

Momentum for new ideas in Alzheimer’s research joined advances in neuroscience, developmental biology and origin-of-life studies to make 2022 a memorable year of biological insights.

A new radiation-based mechanism adds to the ways that amino acids could have been made in space and brought to the young Earth.