Microbes are usually cast as villains, yet most of the microscopic life on and around us is quietly keeping us alive. From the bacteria lining your gut to the organisms drifting in city air, these ...

Microbes are hungry, all the time. They live everywhere, in enormous numbers. We might not see them with the naked eye, but they are in soils, lakes, oceans, hydrothermal vents, our homes, and even in ...

There’s no such thing as living alone. Never mind if you’re the only person in your house and have no dog, no cat, not even fish. You’ve still got at least several billion roommates—and so do we all.

An arial photo of the SPRUCE experiment. Postdoctoral Researchers Caitlin Petro and Borja Aldeguer-Riquelme inside a SPRUCE chamber in 2023. Ph.D. student Katherine Duchesneau sampling porewater ...

Beneath our feet, beyond the reach of sunlight, and buried in the most unforgiving corners of the planet, an unseen world thrives. Though these environments may seem desolate, and devoid of warmth, ...

As microbes invade the human body, phagocytic cells such as macrophages spring into action to clear the intruders. These cells extend arm-like projections and wrap them around the microbes before ...

When a baby enters the world, a world of microbes enters the baby. With apologies to Dr. Seuss, the story of how the developing immune system makes peace with the tiny squatters that populate the ...

Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that infect and kill bacteria. These microscopic predators are found everywhere, from ...

Conservation biologists propose a daunting task: protecting Earth’s diversity of bacteria and other microbes. By Carl Zimmer Hundreds of scientists have joined together to save a group of species from ...

The code of life is simple. Four genetic letters arranged in triplets—called codons—encode amino acids. These are the building blocks of proteins, the machinery that powers life. But the genetic code ...

The microbes living in sourdough starters don’t just appear by chance—they’re shaped by what bakers feed them. New research shows that while the same hardy yeast tends to dominate sourdough starters ...