Depending on others for something you need may feel like a risky proposition—and perhaps a human one. It is actually a ...

Unseen but all around us, the air we breathe in enclosed spaces is crucial to our health and well-being. Indoor air is not simply outdoor air that has been run through a filter: it has its own ...

Life on Earth may have learned to breathe oxygen long before oxygen filled the skies. MIT researchers traced a key ...

Coral reefs are teeming with life: they are home to over a third of all marine animal and plant species on Earth, despite covering less than one percent of the ocean floor. However, this immense ...

Soil microbes remain highly active beneath winter snow, driving complex nitrogen recycling that fuels spring plant growth.

When we eventually mine asteroids, humans and robots will not leave unprotected microbes on the surface. Instead, machines ...

An experiment on board the ISS tested the use of microorganisms to mine asteroids in the microgravity environment.

In the oceans and on land, scientists are discovering rare, transitional organisms that bridge the gap between Earth’s simplest cells and today’s complex ones.

Microorganisms aboard the International Space Station have extracted dozens of metals from actual asteroid fragments, a result that strengthens the case for biology-driven mining on the Moon, Mars, ...

A global atlas mapping two key gut bacteria in infants around the world has uncovered a treasure trove of bacterial strains ...