Two bacteriologists showed that mutations arise spontaneously in bacterial cultures, thereby disproving Jean-Baptiste Lamarck ...

Using genomics, evolutionary biologists test several hypotheses on the origin of viruses. New evidence suggests they may have ...

How did viruses evolve? Are they a streamlined form of something that existed long ago, or an ultimate culmination of smaller genetic elements joined together? Aa Aa Aa The evolutionary history of ...

Scientists generally agree that eukaryotes, the domain of life whose cells contain nuclei and that includes almost all multicellular organisms, originated from a process involving the symbiotic union ...

Bacteria and viruses are often lumped together as germs, and they share many characteristics. They’re invisible to the human eye. They’re everywhere. And both can make us sick, even kill us. That last ...

This article originally appeared on Undark. Pharmacies in the nation of Georgia have something ours don’t: vials of viruses in neat rows. People swallow or gargle the brews to combat routine bacterial ...

Even within your own body, your 30 trillion human cells can’t compete with the 40 trillion or so bacteria that live rent-free in your gut, on your skin, under your toenails. Your very DNA owes a ...

Viruses in human-made environments cause public health concerns, but they are generally less studied than bacteria. A recent study led by environmental scientists provided the first evidence of ...

Scientists have discovered a new type of immune defense in E. coli bacteria that turns viral infection machinery against the virus itself. Named after the Chinese military strategist Kongming—who ...

Long before humans became interested in killing bacteria, viruses were on the job. Viruses that attack bacteria, termed “phages” (short for bacteriophage), were first identified by their ability to ...

Researchers at Columbia Engineering have built a cancer therapy that makes bacteria and viruses work as a team. In a study published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the Synthetic Biological ...