Life Science

148 papers · Page 2 of 2

Whether or not you're prone to binge-eating might come down to the amount of one specific enzyme your brain got while you were growing up.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 20

Termites are the ultimate spies—they sneak into ant nests by perfectly mimicking the sound of an ant's footsteps.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 20

Dolphins are basically superheroes; they can heal deep cuts perfectly without leaving a single scar.

First Ever biorxiv | Mar 20

There’s a specific gut bug that’s way more common in women, and it might be the reason they get MS more often.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 20

Believe it or not, how and when you breathe can actually determine if you’ll be able to spot something tiny or faint.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 20

Turns out adult fruit flies use a totally different set of brain sensors than they did as babies, which totally changes what we thought we knew.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 20

For fish that can change sex, losing a big fight is actually the 'trauma' that flips the switch to make them transform.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 20

Scientists built tiny 'trenches' that give cells a safe place to hide from fast-moving blood that would usually rip them to shreds.

Practical Magic biorxiv | Mar 20

Your antidepressants might actually be working by pretending to be sex hormones and plugging right into your estrogen receptors.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 20

The same yeast you use to bake bread or brew beer might be the secret trigger for a nasty autoimmune disease.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 20

Most of the 'drainage pipes' in your skin are actually made of immune cells, not blood vessel cells like we’ve been told for years.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 20

If you eat junk for too long, the damage to your gut might be permanent—even if you switch to salads later.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 20

Scientists built a type of bacteria that can actually 'learn' how to play Tic-Tac-Toe by saving its memories in its own DNA.

First Ever biorxiv | Mar 20

We’re one step closer to hypoallergenic cats—researchers just used CRISPR to delete the stuff that makes people sneeze.

Practical Magic biorxiv | Mar 20

Scientists went 1,000 meters down into a cave and found weird microbes with 'dark' DNA that we’ve never seen before.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 20

Math says that being a jerk to your own family can actually be a smart move for survival if you're in a group with few kids.

Paradigm Challenge ecoevorxiv | Mar 20

The oils that make thyme smell good also act as a heat shield to keep the plant from dying in heatwaves.

Nature Is Weird ecoevorxiv | Mar 19

Fancy bird feathers might have evolved just to prove to females that a male is a loyal dad.

Paradigm Challenge ecoevorxiv | Mar 19

When a mom holds her preemie skin-to-skin, their brain waves actually start syncing up in real-time.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 18

In big groups, bacteria that usually fight each other for food can suddenly flip a switch and start helping each other out.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 17

There's a marine parasite that 'reprograms' male hermit crabs to grow female body parts just so they can baby-sit its offspring.

Nature Is Weird ecoevorxiv | Mar 17

That whole 'earthworm apocalypse' everyone was worried about in the UK? Turns out it was probably just a huge math error.

Paradigm Challenge ecoevorxiv | Mar 16

A species can be legally 'saved' from extinction even if its DNA is still quietly falling apart in the background.

Paradigm Challenge ecoevorxiv | Mar 16

It turns out some proteins are literally tied in knots just to make sure they never accidentally unfold.

Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 13

We found a parasite where the entire DNA strand acts like a docking station for cell division, rather than just one spot.

First Ever biorxiv | Mar 13

If you mess with a baby bee's gut bacteria, its brain never actually develops a biological clock.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 13

We always thought aggressive childhood cancers were there from birth, but it turns out they don't even start growing until after infancy.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 13

Hawkmoths guide their long tongues to flowers using "eye-hand" coordination, just like you use your eyes to guide your hands.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 13

How much a mother aphid walks around literally decides whether her babies are born with wings or not.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 13

Your brain actually syncs up more strongly with the voices of people you don't trust. Weird, right?

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 13

You can chop a flatworm into pieces, and the new ones will still "remember" which genes were turned off in the original.

First Ever biorxiv | Mar 13

A famous cancer protein actually clumps together just like in Alzheimer's, but it does it to act as a "self-destruct" button for tumors.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 13

Scientists used ultrasound to "hack" the brains of newbies and make them look like expert meditators in just two weeks.

Practical Magic biorxiv | Mar 13

Everything we thought we knew about where thyroid cells come from was wrong, solving a massive mystery in how mammals evolved.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 13

DNA doesn't just float around in your cells—it actually moves in perfectly timed "waves" across your chromosomes.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 13

Tumors can kill you by basically forcing your gut bacteria to break out and invade the rest of your body.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 13

If you play certain sounds while someone is sleeping, they’ll actually be more decisive about tough choices the next day.

Practical Magic biorxiv | Mar 13

That 30-year-old idea that dieting makes you live longer might be completely wrong.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 13

Giving your inner ear a tiny zap of electricity while you sleep can actually trigger a lucid dream.

Practical Magic biorxiv | Mar 13

Plants don't follow a complex master plan to grow branches—they basically just flip a coin every time.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 13

There’s a mathematical law that dictates the exact geometric shape of the "Tree of Life" for every living thing on Earth.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 13

A new theory says Neanderthals weren't a separate group that split off early—they were actually formed by modern humans moving around 300,000 years ago.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 13

In some lakes, viruses are the ones deciding if a bacteria colony actually acts its size, breaking all the usual rules of ecology.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 13

We finally found the "secret door" that a common childhood virus uses to sneak into human cells.

First Ever biorxiv | Mar 13

A deadly, drug-resistant fungus has reached Antarctica, and it's evolving at hyper-speed thanks to some "mutator" genes.

Nature Is Weird biorxiv | Mar 13

We found a way to film a single molecule for over 24 hours straight without it "fading out" like they usually do.

Practical Magic biorxiv | Mar 13

Your immune cells don't just pick the stickiest antibodies—they actually "tug" on them to see which ones are the strongest.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 13

Even the best AI is getting it wrong—AlphaFold is dreaming up protein structures that literally break the laws of chemistry.

Paradigm Challenge biorxiv | Mar 13