We often think of microbes as organisms that live around us, like the Salmonella bacteria and flu viruses that cause illness.

A sweeping analysis of thousands of animal genomes suggests that chromosomes do not evolve randomly but instead follow a limited number of irreversible “evolutionary highways.” These one-way genetic ...

Humans have become one of the world's greatest evolutionary forces. To survive our cities, animals from urban foxes to ...

A human, an octopus, and a coral could hardly look more different—yet deep inside their cells, their chromosomes still carry ...

By examining thousands of genomes along with fragments of ancient chromosomes, researchers uncovered the intricate journey of ...

Many animal species, ranging from peacocks and birds of paradise to some lizards, fish and beetles, display physical features ...

A visualization of Tiktaalik roseae, an extinct aquatic animal with fossils that shed light on the evolution of land animals from marine animals millions of years ago. Nobu Tamura via Wikimedia ...

New research suggests ancient feces helped fuel marine life during the Cambrian Explosion.

A series of whole genome and gene duplication events that go back hundreds of millions of years have laid the foundations for tissue-specific gene expression, according to a new study. The 'copy-paste ...

A microorganism whose evolutionary roots can be traced to the era of the first multicellular animals may provide a glimpse of how single-celled organisms made a critical evolutionary leap. In ...