The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of biology.

A giant DNA virus pulled from a Japanese freshwater pond is forcing scientists to rethink how complex cells first acquired their defining feature: the nucleus. Named ushikuvirus, the newly ...

Researchers have created a method called optovolution that uses light to guide the evolution of proteins with dynamic behaviors. By engineering yeast cells so their survival depended on proteins ...

A research team led by Sahand Jamal Rahi at EPFL’s Laboratory of the Physics of Biological Systems has introduced a new ...

EPFL researchers have developed a light-based method that can produce proteins that switch states, respond to signals, and even compute, using light and the cell cycle.

One of the biggest quests in biology is understanding how every cell in an animal's body carries an identical genome yet still gives rise to a kaleidoscope of different cell types and tissues. A ...

Early mammalian ancestors were nocturnal, sleeping during the day while the dinosaurs dominated the land. However, some mammalian lineages, including human ancestors, independently transitioned to ...

Evolution is perhaps the most extraordinary story ever told—a tale spanning billions of years that connects every living thing on Earth through an intricate ...