Number of words: 479 Language offers a way to take the thoughts of one person, encode them, and insert them into the minds of others. We can achieve that remarkable feat of thought transference without the pain, drilling, and bloodshed of trepanning. If someone has a great idea, it can spread instantly and does not … Read more

Number of words: 735 Remarkably, the colonies cannot survive without their Leucocoprinus fungus and the fungus is found nowhere but in these colonies. They do not do farm the precious fungus on the surface. Instead, they grow fungus in underground chambers that can reach the size of a football. In all, a single leaf-cutter nest … Read more

Number of words: 242 The clever design of crypts is a direct consequence of how tissues are renewed by stem cells, the “parent cells” in the body. This is particularly important because, given how much material we digest, the lining of the colon is forever being replenished. A few stem cells sit at the base … Read more

Number of words: 875 Cancer starts with the origin of a single cheat: this solitary cell has a dangerous mutation and multiplies to form a small lesion. Now a few thousand cells have this mutation. Nothing might happen for years. Or nothing might ever happen at all. If another mutation allows this ensemble of cheats … Read more

Number of words: 341 Multicellular strings of bacteria were born around 3.5 billion years ago. Filamentous bacteria—so named because they form chains—kill themselves to yield precious nitrogen for the good of their sisters. Every tenth or so cell commits suicide for the benefit of this communal thread of bacterial life. Another, quite different kind of … Read more

Number of words: 555 The extraordinary possibilities of evolution are the result of errors in replication. Mutations are critical. If the replication of RNA were error free, and perfect, no mutants would arise and evolution would stop. Nothing would change. There would be no living diversity. So mutations are required for life to emerge. Equally, … Read more

Number of words: 337 In the traditional picture of the origins of life, the instant the first replicator pops up is a rare and fleeting moment that bootstraps the rest of evolution. This is an enormously lucky event, a fleeting spark that lights the fuse of all life. As in Greek cosmology, from a “vast … Read more

Number of words: 164 Look under the hood, into the cells of the life that thrives around us, and you will find master molecular replicators, the messengers of our inheritance. Today, the most common is deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. Apart from a few viruses, all life on Earth now relies on DNA to hold the information … Read more

Number of words: 340 Centuries ago, the Scottish botanist Robert Brown became fascinated by the zigzag motion of fragments within pollen grains. In his pioneering observations, made with a primitive microscope, Brown had spotted this random jittery motion as early as 1827. What puzzled him was that this incessant movement did not arise from currents … Read more

Number of words: 441 Legend has it that, one day in a pub in Bloomsbury in 1955, a lively conversation with Haldane over a few pints turned to the serious subject of the lengths that one would go to save another’s life. Would, for example, Haldane risk his life to save a drowning man? Haldane, … Read more