In 1990, I finished my PhD on primate evolution and went to my postdoc in Davis, California, USA. It was meant to be on fruit fly ...

A giant virus discovered in Japan is adding fuel to the provocative idea that viruses helped create complex life. Named ushikuvirus, it infects amoebae and shows unique traits that connect different ...

Microbiologists Patrick Moreira and Purificación López-García, together with virologists Arturo Ludmir and Lynn Enquist, are at the center of a sharp debate over whether viruses count as living ...

A giant virus encodes part of the protein-making toolkit of cells that gives it greater control over its amoeba host, raising questions about how it evolved and how such beings relate to living organi ...

In a new study, published in Cell, researchers describe a newfound mechanism for creating proteins in a giant DNA virus, ...

Russell has a PhD in the history of medicine, violence, and colonialism. His research has explored topics including ethics, science governance, and medical involvement in violent contexts. Russell has ...

Vaccinating birds against bird flu reduces the spread of the disease, but may have unintended consequences. This is the warning of a new paper in the journal Science Advances, which concluded that ...

In 2003, Jean-Michel Claverie made a discovery in bacterial genomics that would change his career trajectory and begin a new era in microbiology. “One day, we found a very strange beast that nobody ...

A new study has shown that person-to-person variation in antibody immunity plays a key role in shaping which influenza (flu) strains dominate in a population. The work, published today as a Reviewed ...