Biology Archives - Attention to the Unseen

100,000 simulations of comets striking Earth suggest the ingredients of life were not extraterrestrial

From elsewhere — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 23:18:49 +0000

Science Alert reports: Where did we come from? The answer, many scientists have proposed, is space. One longstanding theory, hypothesized for over a century, is that life on Earth emerged from fragments of prebiotic chemistry that arrived from the cosmic unknowns, possibly delivered by far-flung comets. The idea is supported by a growing body of evidence, with scientists detecting signs of organic molecules in comets soaring through space, which hypothetically could seed the ingredients of life on worlds they come...

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Why did humans’ brains surpass chimps’? An ancient virus might help explain it

From elsewhere — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:35:41 +0000

Science News reports: Viruses may be minuscule, but one could have influenced major differences between human and chimpanzee brains. Millions of years ago, a virus left DNA behind in an African ape’s genome, and the genetic material stuck around in modern day chimps. Those ghosts of infections past appear to influence genes involved in neuron development, which may help explain how human and chimp brains ended up so different, researchers report October 23 in Science Advances. Compared with the brains...

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Start-up claims to use AI-created phage viruses to treat a patient

From elsewhere — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:04:49 +0000

The New York Times reports: For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient. Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly bacterial infection. Phages attack bacteria, and the hope is that this one will kill the microbes causing the infection. Radical Numerics, the start-up that created the viruses, posted a technical report about them on its...

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Plants can speak using electricity. This startup built an AI model to decipher their language

From elsewhere — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:02:27 +0000

TechCrunch reports: Justin Mast’s life was changed by a cyborg plant. A few years ago, Mast was reading through some scientific literature when he stumbled upon research about a houseplant wired to a motorized stand. When the plant wanted more light, electrical signals flowed through the living tissues. A control board sensed the current and wheeled the plant closer to the light source. “I’m like, what the heck?” Mast told TechCrunch. “That was the entry to the rabbit hole for...

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‘I didn’t want to write about this’: The primatologist who first saw chimps waging civil war

From elsewhere — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 01:03:17 +0000

The Guardian reports: [John] Mitani [a primatologist from northern California] estimates he has spent 85 months of his life hiking the forests of Ngogo [in Uganda’s Kibale national park], or approximately seven years. What began as a few basic structures and tents has grown into a large – albeit rustic – research camp that has housed the nearly 90 researchers who have worked with the Ngogo project over three decades. The findings that have emerged from Ngogo over the years...

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David Krakauer: ‘What we have to cultivate is amazing question-askers’

From elsewhere — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 01:12:09 +0000

Why did intelligence evolve in the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, and Gary O’Reilly explore the nature of intelligence, information theory, consciousness, and whether AI is actually intelligent at all with David Krakauer, evolutionary biologist and president of the Santa Fe Institute. Can you conceive of life without intelligence, or intelligence without life? We parse the difference between intelligence and being alive and whether you can be one without the other. What does it mean for something to...

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Was the human microbiome healthier in ancient times?

From elsewhere — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:35:07 +0000

The New York Times reports: The human microbiome — the trillions of microbes that live in our guts — was a stable ecosystem for tens of thousands of years before rapidly changing in industrialized countries, raising possible health concerns for modern people, scientists reported on Wednesday. In a study of Africans and South Americans, researchers identified more than 600 species of bacteria that may once have been common in the gut but are now rare or missing entirely from people...

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A human gene lurks in a virus that causes skin infections

From elsewhere — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:06:53 +0000

The New York Times reports: Scientists have discovered a virus that is a tiny bit human, carrying a gene it stole from our ancestors about 100,000 years ago. And this virus may be using our own gene to infect us. Previous studies have demonstrated that viruses can pick up genes from their hosts. But the new discovery, reported Thursday in the journal Science, may be the first known instance of a virus with a human gene acquired in recent evolutionary...

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In an $80 motel room, a discovery sheds light on the origins of life

From elsewhere — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 23:17:59 +0000

The New York Times reports: On a spring day last year, Andrew Willoughby drove three and a half hours to a cheap motel in Nags Head, N.C. From the parking lot, he texted a stranger he had met online. Julia Van Etten appeared, ushering him past a “Do Not Disturb” sign into one of the motel’s $80 rooms, which she had secretly turned into a makeshift lab. Jugs of brackish water lined the walls. Buckets overflowed with hunks of marsh...

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How virus-like ‘jumping genes’ became our partners in evolution

From elsewhere — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:31:39 +0000

Jake Buehler writes: You might imagine that the DNA in your cells has a simple history. Even though it’s been recombined in every generation through sex and gained the occasional mutation, on the whole the genome has been stable and has been passed down reliably from your ancestors. But that’s not the entire story. Nearly half of your genome is a wild drama: mobile, repetitive, disruptive, even viral. This half is the result of genetic material that can clip itself...

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