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-- In 1932, Winston Churchill predicted that in fifty years “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately.” Now, almost eighty years later, we may finally be getting close…

-- Just as a football game cannot be played with just one person, many tasks performed by cells require multiple players, too. For many bacteria to act as one, proper communication is key. One way of talking to a neighboring bacterium is called quorum…

-- Synthetic biologists are a new breed of researchers: part-scientist, part-engineer. Building on the work of more traditional biologists, synthetic biologists try to use what we know about biology to engineer new functions into living things, such as…

-- Scientists and prostate cancer patients alike cheered when the FDA approved Provenge, the first therapeutic vaccine for prostate cancer, in April 2010. A few months later, a second group of researchers published a clinical study that suggested the…

-- Connectivity between neurons is central to nervous system function; on a more personal level, the unique connections within our brains may be what contribute to our individuality. The emerging field of connectomics seeks to gather and analyze…

--You may be surprised by how much we have learned about life on Earth by observing some of the most distant objects we find in the universe: supernovae. These are the brief, but brilliant, explosions that end the life of certain types of stars and can…

--It’s ten seconds to midnight on New Year’s Eve, but by whose watch? Like all standards, measurements of time are arbitrary, and only as good as the precision of each ‘tick.’ As no clock is perfect, each will eventually speed up or slow down, making…

--You are most likely reading this article on a computer, and as you scroll down the page, you may decide to briefly switch over to Facebook or Twitter to type a quick status update. We usually do not stop to think that the ease with which we can do…

--Mosquitoes, and the diseases they carry, have been a threat to human health for millennia. Despite advances in research and efforts in disease control, mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever still ravage much of the developing world,…

A study published this summer in the journal Science found, for the first time, significant success in preventing HIV infection using a vaginal microbicidal gel [1]. This finding is an important step in our understanding of HIV prevention and in curbing…