Life

  1. Life

    Building the body electric

    Eyes can be grown in a frog’s gut by changing cells’ electrical properties, scientists find, opening up new possibilities for generating and regenerating complex organs.

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  2. Life

    Eggs have own biological clock

    Reproductive cells age independently from the rest of the body, research in worms reveals.

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  3. Life

    Bacteria in bondage

    Cells unleash proteins to cage unwanted invaders.

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  4. Humans

    DNA highlights Native American die-off

    A genetic analysis points to widespread New World deaths after Europeans arrived.

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  5. Life

    Vying for the title of World’s Fastest Cell

    Scientists film 58 kinds of mobile cells to study movement — and to have a little fun.

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  6. Life

    Biology’s big bang had a long fuse

    The fossil record’s earliest troves of animal life are the result of more than 200 million years of evolution.

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  7. Life

    Cretaceous Thanksgiving

    A fossilized feathered dinosaur dined on bird not long before its own demise.

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  8. Life

    DNA to flutter by

    The complete genetic instruction book for making monarch butterflies contains information about how the insects manage their long migration to Mexico.

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  9. Life

    Unraveling synesthesia

    Tangled senses may have genetic or chemical roots, or both.

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  10. Animals

    Lost to history: The “churk”

    More than a half-century ago, researchers at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center outside Washington, D.C., engaged in some creative barnyard breeding. Their goal was the development of fatherless turkeys — virgin hens that would reproduce via parthenogenesis. Along the way, and ostensibly quite by accident, an interim stage of this work resulted in a rooster-fathered hybrid that the scientists termed a churk.

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  11. Life

    Immune cells function beyond battle

    Cells lining the intestines take cues from immune cells and gut bacteria when deciding whether self-defense or metabolism is more important.

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  12. Plants

    Flirty Plants

    Searching for signs of picky, competitive mating in a whole other kingdom.

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